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College, Cambridge ... it should be understood as the result of the endeavours of a person who ardently wishes to promote the science he professes as well as the glory of the patron who supports him. 1 The 40ft reflector that the former musician William Herschel (1738-1822) built at Slough, near Windsor, in the later 1780s was renowned in its day as one of the wonders of the world, featured on the Ordnance Survey map (Figure 1) and compared in the popular press to the Colossus of Rhodes and the Porcelain Tower of Nankin.' The scale of the support of King George III for its construction -two grants of £2000 each, £200 a year for running costs and £50 a year for Herschel's assistant, his sister Caroline (1750-1848) -is very familiar to historians, as is the monster's disappointing performance. Yet puzzles remain. Was the initial £2000 intended to cover the total cost of construction -and if so, how was the King persuaded to make a second and equally massive grant (and cheerfully, by all accounts)? And if the telescope was a failure, why did Herschel struggle with it into his old age, repeatedly repolishing the one-ton mirror and refurbishing the mounting? In what follows we seek to answer these questions. FIG. I. "Herschel's Telescope" marked on the 1830 Ordnance Survey map of the Windsor area.