In the early 1970’s  S & S  Optika started building telescopes in Des Moines, Iowa.  The “S & S” came from the two original owners whose last names both started with the letter S.

In Feb. 1972 we moved to Denver, Colorado.  We soon applied and received our business license in Oct. of 1972.  We began by selling out of our house, the 6” and 8” telescopes we designed and built.

Selling from the house was not working well, so in the fall of 1973, we moved to a retail store on South Broadway in Englewood, Colorado.  Shortly after we moved into the store, we added Unitron and Mayflower telescopes to our stock.  We started carrying Astronomy Magazine from it’s first issue in 1973. 

In the spring of 1976, we became Celestron’s second US retail dealer, shortly after Roger Tuthill.  By the way, we are still a Celestron dealer... Making us the oldest U.S. dealer for them.

In the mid 1980’s we worked with Celestron  in making our own CUSTOM C8’s.  More will be written in the future in our “Special Projects” photo section.

In 1977, (approx.) we added our K & E optical bench and 12” and 24” Aluminizing Chambers.

6” S & S Optika   circa 1976

Fairly recently a customer found this picture of his old  telescope and sent it to us.