Amazing Gurley Reconnoissance Transit with Saegmueller Solar Attachement

Little Known Fact - Putting a Saegmueller Solar Attachment on top of Gurley Transit was "A Thing" back in the day. The Gurley Saegmueller offered here is the fourth Gurley Saegmueller Transit that I've come across the last few months. And I haven't even been looking for Gurley Saegmueller Transits. I spotted the other three Gurley Saegmuellers while looking through GLO field notes while researching other instruments. I suspect there were many more Gurley Saegmuellers made than the four I came across.

One question is this - who was putting Saegmueller attachments on Gurley Transits? Gurley did not list a Saegmueller option in its catalogues. I understand that Gurley would do special order stuff all the time, however, so I wouldn't be surprised if Gurley sometimes installed a Saegmueller on one of its transits. Money is money, after all. But I suspect that any of the major instrument makers could retrofit a Saegmueller on a Gurley instrument as well. I know that Sala claimed in its catalogue that it could install a Burt or Saegmueller unit on ANY transit, for example.

I believe that Gurley installed the Saegmueller unit on the Recon transit offered here. The installation was perfectly done for one thing. Building a spot in the box for the Saegmueller was also perfectly done. And, importantly, there are only Gurley stickers in the box. My experience is this - when another maker worked on an instrument, that maker would as a rule put his label in the box. So my best guess is that this was a Gurley special order job. But there is no way to confirm this, of course.

Another question - why would somebody put a Saegmueller on a Gurley transit? The answer is that the Saegmueller unit could do both solar and mining work while attached to the Gurley transit. Gurley offered a mining transit, a solar transit, or a combined solar and mining transit. But the combined solar and mining transit required two separate attachments (a Burt solar unit and a second scope for mining work), which created added cost and was cumbersome to use. For those surveyors and engineers wanting a solar transit that could look down vertical mine shafts, a transit with a Saegmueller unit was a smart choice. I've included a few pics below showing the Gurley Saegmueller to a Gurley Light Mountain Solar Transit - not the difference in vertical sighting.

Immediately below are the key pages from 3 GLO surveys (2 rectangular surveys and 1 mineral survey) showing surveyors using 3 different Gurley Saegmueller setups.

Gurley's Reconnoissance Transits are pretty cool little transits. They were the smallest transit Gurley made until Gurley introduced in 1905 or so. Rather than list the specs here, below you will see Gurley's description and prices from the 1906 Gurley Manual. Note that the Transit offered here is the Model 102 version, with the larger Vertical Circle.

Everything seems to work fine on this transit. The scope is a bit cloudy, but not too bad. The crosshairs and stadia are in great shape. All the knobs turn. As you can see from the pics, this transit was very lightly used before it was put away and stored.

The box comes packed with goodies. Interestingly, the box contains a rarely seen Davis Solar Screen, which is a great option to have. I've included a couple of pics of the transit with the Davis Solar Screen attached. Very cool.

The transit also comes with an extra eyepiece, a Diagonal Prism, a plumb bob with a windup mechanism, a magnifying class, and a few small tools.

As luck would have it, the Gurley Saegmueller also comes with a prior owner's name in the box (under the Gurley label). Charles Loeffler. I did a quick search for that name and pulled up a number of possibilities. But nothing jumped out at me. So I'll leave that for the next owner to research.

All told, this is a wonderful transit with a bunch of nice accessories.

This Gurley Saegmueller Solar & Mining Transit is SPECIAL. There had to be a good number of these transits made if I could find 4 of them without actually trying to find them. And you can understand why surveyors would order them - Gurley didn't offer a combined and easy to use Solar & Mining Transit. The Gurley transit offered here is a PERFECT example of this neat niche market.