Edmund Scientific Corporation - Edmund's Heyday

Edmund's Heyday

Following Sputnik, Edmund was able to capitalize on a growing national interest in science and astronomy. They expanded their business into a full line of telescopes and telescope kits as well as equipment, parts, and supplies for other scientific fields such as physics, optics, chemistry, electronics, and meteorology. They continued to grow as a supplier to teachers and schools with demonstration devices and kits that covered most fields of science.

Edmund's catalog became a source for optical and mechanical parts useful in the field of amateur telescope making. A compilation of Edmunds' earlier pamphlets published as the book "All About Telescopes" offered many designs for telescopes of all sizes and configurations, which directed the builder to the relative Edmund catalog part numbers needed for each design. The "Factory Store" in Barrington, New Jersey also had a number of bins and shelves full of surplus and hard to find items which never made it into the catalogs.

Edmunds catered to the 1960s generation by expanding and highlighting their line of projectors, color wheels, black lights, filters, and other optical devices that could be used by rock bands and in psychedelic light shows. Other items that catered to the counterculture were eventually added to the catalog covering the fields of Biofeedback, ESP, Kirlian photography, Pyramid power, and alternative energy. In 1971, in the Whole Earth Catalog of items "relevant to independent education," Stewart Brand noted: "Edmund is the best source we know of for low-cost scientific gadgetry (including math and optics gear). many of the items we found independently... turned up in the Edmund catalog, so we were obliged to recommend that in this area we've been precluded." That is, the Edmund catalog was virtually a Whole Earth Catalog for items related to scientific fields.