Early Life
Gray was born in Canterbury, Kent and after some basic schooling, he was apprenticed to his father (and later his elder brother) in the cloth-dyeing trade. His interests, however, lay with natural science and particularly with astronomy, and he managed to educate himself in these developing disciplines, mainly through wealthy friends in the district who gave him access to their libraries and scientific instruments. Science was very much a rich-man's hobby at this time.
He ground his own lenses and constructed his own telescope, and with this instrument he made a number of minor discoveries (mainly in the area of sunspots), gaining a reputation for accuracy in his observations. Some of his reports were published by the Royal Society through the agency of a friend Henry Hunt who was a member of the Society's secretarial staff.
Read more about this topic: Stephen Gray (scientist)
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