* Astronomy

James Short (10 June O.S. (21 June N.S.) 1710 - 15 June 1768) was a Scottish mathematician, optician and telescope maker.
In Short's first telescopes the specula were made of glass, as suggested by James Gregory, but later he used metallic specula only, and thus succeeded in giving them true parabolic and elliptic shapes. Short then adopted telescope-making as his profession, which he practised first in Edinburgh and afterwards in London.
Almost all of Short's telescopes were of the Gregorian form, and some of them even today retain their original high polish and sharp definition.
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