Figure 8.—Advertisement of Henry Fitz, about 1850. (Smithsonian photo 44594-a)
Figure 9.—Refracting telescope, comet seeker, (USNM 317027) by Henry Fitz, 8¼-inch aperture, 61-inch tube, fitted for equatorial mounting. The stand is lacking. (Smithsonian photo 46815)
Although he saved money, his work did not bring him the financial or other rewards that he had hoped for. In spring of 1839 he appears to have worked as a speculum maker with Wolcott and others—one of them may have been his acquaintance John Johnson—and to have read of Daguerre’s work in photography. To learn more of these experiments, as well as to inquire into optics and optical glass, he sailed to Europe in August of that year, taking passage by steerage.
He returned to New York in November 1839 and in that month, according to the testimony of his son Harry, made a portrait with a camera invented by Wolcott. This camera portrait he believed to be the first ever made. In 1840, after more experimenting, he set up a studio in Baltimore, where his father was then living, and spent several years there “taking likenesses.” At the same time he continued to work with telescopes and lenses. His first refractors were built there, instruments he later referred to as crude affairs.
While in Baltimore he took a step which marks the beginning of the final phase of his career. In June 1844 he married Julia Ann Wells of Southold, Long Island, whom he had known for about a decade and with whom he had long corresponded. Julia was a woman of unusual ability and personality, less scientific than he but more literary and artistic, and no less intelligent. With her to encourage him, he continued his experiments in telescope building. A year after their marriage they moved to New York, where he was to spend the remainder of his life.
That summer he prepared a 6-inch refracting telescope for exhibition at the Fair of the American Institute, held annually in New York. This carefully constructed instrument, with its ingenious tripod and its achromatic objective—which he had made himself, correcting the curves by a process of his own invention—won the highest award of the Fair, a gold medal. It was the first of many such medals he was to earn. His telescope also received favorable notice from scientists and astronomers, among them Lewis M. Rutherfurd, a wealthy New Yorker and trustee of Columbia College. Rutherfurd immediately ordered a 4-inch refractor for his own observatory. His interest and example soon brought orders from others.