>>I bet it was quite a learning experience!
Absolutely! I was engaged for a year to the optics instructor!
It was wonderful. Chicago’s Adler Planetarium basement, where the ghost of William Herschel walked. Or so they said to scare us kids. 6” F8. For my birthday, several of the guys put the mirror into a baby blue tube that laid in a velvet mount. Some part of it was pink, I remember. Ended up in Sky and Telescope with someone else showing it off.
My first real job after graduating college was 5 months giving hallway lectures at Adler. I checked out on the Zeiss but wasn’t allowed to give lectures there as I was a woman and, in the dark, a woman’s voice wouldn’t be authoritative. Which is why women of my age became feminists. It was a political job (patronage office on 55th st; mother knew someone who knew someone) and they caught me the day after the election when I worked as a Republican election judge.