![]() The other main instrument available at the INT is the Intermediate Dispersion Spectrograph (IDS), recently re-introduced having been unavailable for a period of several years. Today, it is used mostly with the Wide Field Camera (WFC), a four CCD instrument with a field of view of 0.56×0.56 square degrees which was commissioned in 1997. The original Pyrex mirror was replaced by a larger 100 inch (2.54 metre) one made of a new type of glass Zerodur glass. It saw its second first light in 1984, with a video camera. In 1979, the INT was shipped to the top of the mountain at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma where it continues working to this day. With the advent of mass air travel it was plausible for UK astronomers to run an overseas observatory. There were some early prototypes and also modern replicas of this design. 3 4 It was the prototype for a design that later came to be called the Newtonian telescope. Although the INT itself was acquitting itself at Herstmonceux, the weather at the site was not ideal. The first reflecting telescope built by Sir Isaac Newton in 1668 2 is a landmark in the history of telescopes, being the first known successful reflecting telescope. This led to a project for the founding of an international observatory in the Canary Islands. In the late 1960s a concept was developing for a Northern Hemisphere Observatory. The telescope consists of two tubes, one sliding inside the other to focus the mirrors. Woolley probably believed that even if the telescope was not fully justified here, it was a stepping stone to get good British telescopes at better sites abroad, and so it turned out to be. It was the Isaac Newton telescope, it couldn’t be anywhere else than in Britain there was no other option. The answer refers back to the politics of the project. The question of whether or not it was sensible to put such a big telescope at a limited site was asked before it was built, and more and more openly afterwards.
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