High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Craig telescope was the largest refracting telescope (a telescope with a lens) in the world from 1852 to 1857, erected near London, England. It was a great refractor, a large refracting telescope with an achromatic doublet with an aperture of 61 cm (2 feet (24 inches)) and that was completed in 1852 in Wandsworth Common and dismantled around 1857 (although the brick tower probably survived until 1870). Its namesake, the Rev. John Craig, spent a small fortune to produce a uniquely designed telescope with nearly double the aperture of the next largest refracting telescopes, making it the largest refracting telescope in the World for the better part of a decade. However, it had problem with its lens figuring starting from its first light in the summer of 1852.It soon fell into disuse as that same year Craig lost his only son, then his wife in 1854, and lost his brother and was put in jail for 6 weeks in 1856.