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The following is the 'new product announcement' that Company Seven circulated as a joke after our quality control testing team discovered that a newly arrived Meade 14 inch telescope came from the factory with an incorrectly engraved Corrector Lens Retaining Ring. The ring indicated the telescope was a 16 inch ACF f/10 telescope instead of the correct 14 inch model. So, by our reasoning that Meade could not make such a mistake we determined this must have been an entirely new optical physics technology developed by Meade Instruments that was heretofore unknown publicly. In the spirit of having some fun at the manufacturers expense we E-Mailed this to many of our friends:
YOU HEARD IT FROM COMPANY SEVEN FIRST!
Meade Instruments has just pulled way ahead all the competitors in the optics manufacturing world by developing their newest "ACF/IA" series telescopes. Yes the new "ADVANCED COMA-FREE/INSTANT APERTURE" telescopes provide dramatic increases of aperture, yet Meade has packaged these increases into unprecedentedly compact
and narrow forms.
For example look at the new Meade telescope optical tube assembly just evaluated by Company Seven yesterday. The telescope appears to be a 14 inch aperture (355.6mm) system with a focal length of 3,556mm. But the Corrector Lens Retaining Ring reveals it is in fact "D=406.4mm F=4064mm"; so this is really a 16 inch f/10 telescope packaged into a form as compact as the 14.
Just imagine this telescope shown below should provide about 1.3 times the light gathering power of a traditional 14 inch telescope, and yet this telescope optical tube assembly is no larger and weighs no more than a conventional Meade 14!
THIS IS REVOLUTIONARY!
Above: Corrector Lens Retaining Ring of Meade 14" OTA, SN 107674 undergoing acceptance evaluation at Company Seven.
Ruler shown proves this is a 14" OTA, but it is clearly labeled revealing it contains Meade's new 406.4mm ACF/IA optics inside.
WE ARE IN AWE!
The E-Mail we circulated above prompted a number of replies speculating how Meade might have achieved this dramatic technological breakthrough defying physics itself including:
- This should help them tremendously over thier competition!!
- Plainly there is some weird Lorentz contraction correction I have always omitted when measuring apertures - mind you I did once have a Meade 8" SCT that was f/6.3 - f/10 selectable - Said 6.3 on the corrector ring but the mirror was f/10!
You couldn't make this up, could you...
- Millimeters, inches, focal ratios, tape measures—you know how numbers confuse me. Could you please just convert this to furlongs? I'm trying to figure shipping costs on this 'scope. How many barleycorns does it weigh, please?
- Wow! Virtual Aperture ... wotta concept. You should be able to sell a ton of those.
- don't remove the corrector! You see, in this new advanced line of telescopes, they use smoke and mirrors! You don't want to let the magic Meade smoke out. I think the special smoke alters the velocity factor of the medium that the light has to propagate through, effectively lengthening the path and focal length.
The secret is increasing the aperture; possibly using the hidden dimensions that string theory predicts.
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C-7 News 
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