A Brief History Orion Telescopes and Binoculars was founded in 1975 at Santa Cruz, California by Tim Gieseler. Originally known as "Optronic Technologies", it was then a company engaged in the design and manufacture of electronic accessories for amateur telescopes.

Orion marketed its first products under the "AccuTrak™" trademark. The most popular of these accessories was the "Drive Corrector", an accessory to precisely control telescopes which incorporate an AC synchronous tracking motor. The drive corrector could permit the operator to use the telescope in the field from portable 12 volt D.C. power sources, and precisely speed up or slow down the tracking to compensate for errors of Polar Alignment, or of mechanical imperfections in the mount. The "Dual Axis Drive Corrector" added the capability to control an optional Declination motor for centering an object in the field of view. For a time, Celestron International contracted Optronics to manufacture drive correctors to be marketed under the Celestron trademark; one of these is on display in Company Seven's showroom museum collection alongside an early Celestron 8. Drive correctors were almost necessary accessories for many tracking telescopes sold until 1985 when Meade Instruments Corp. became the first manufacturer to incorporate a drive corrector and 12 volt DC operation into the "LX3" series Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope integrated circuit board. Since then, more and more manufacturers included such circuits, and other improvements thereby reducing the market for third party drive correctors. To this day, electronic drive motor and corrector accessories sold by Orion still bear the name "Accutrak™".

The Optronics subsidiary "Orion" was conceived to market consumer telescopes. Their approach was to offer good quality telescopes targeting the beginner and intermediate amateur astronomer market. The marketing strategy was unprecedented in this hobby: 1. produce a beautifully illustrated catalog with wide distribution, 2. explain what is being sold in terms amateurs can relate to, 3. offer products at prices that are competitive - not always the cheapest, but then Orion has always provided service and catalogs that merit what slight difference in cost charged, 4. buy full page advertisements in popular astronomy magazines produced with a consistently professional appearance, 5. maintain a warehouse to assure prompt delivery of items ordered, and 6. offer liberal customer service policies. To this day, nobody does this any better.

Orion offered many popular consumer lines including TeleVue, Meade Instruments, and Celestron. But in time some of the manufacturers who Orion relied upon became less vital to the Orion plan. Some were so concerned about marketing concepts that they modified they product line offerings - "new and improved" often meant "cheaper and with less accessories". In one instance, Celestron who used to distribute the Japanese made "Vixen" products dropped the entire line in favor of less capable products which could be sold at lower prices. Vixen featured well made achromatic and fluorite apochromatic telescopes (most notably the highly regarded Vixen 102 Fluorite Apochromat, some Newtonian models, and interesting accessories. Orion began to realize that for its success it should rely less on companies run by people who probably knew less than Tim. And so Orion gradually picked up products and sometimes marketed these under the "Orion" trademark, or designed and commissioned items to be made for sale under their trademark. In some areas Orion felt their products were so adequate that they no longer needed to offer products made by previous suppliers - who were now in effect Orions competitors.

Right: Orion SkyQuest™ XT10 IntelliScope™ telescope. Note the IntelliScope™ Control shown here is optional (51,107 Bytes). Click on image to see enlarged view (85,940 bytes)

Today Orion's range of accessories include items such as their well reviewed Sky Pollution Rejection Filters, Eyepieces, their unique Polyester/Nylon padded telescope soft cases, Lights Out™ observing hood, and much more. Orion developed telescopes including the original SkyQuest™ series Dobsonian Reflectors XT6, XT8, and XT10. And by 2003 these evolved into the highly innovative and fun to use SkyQuest™ XT6 IntelliScope™, XT8 IntelliScope™, and XT10 IntelliScope™. For 2004 Orion scaled up the XT10 into a serious yet handy light bucket - the XT12 IntelliScope™. Each of these telescopes have been rated the best in their respective class by publications, and more importantly by the amateur community and Company Seven!