I don't know if all Y'all are still reading this thread or not. There were some very technically oriented folks who have given their bio's listed above. Here's mine.
I was a dedicated amateur, semi-pro, professional, semi-pro, somewhat dedicated amateur photographer in that order. Then came the pawnbroker stage. I thought I could get better deals on photo gear if I was a pawnbroker. After pawnbroking for ten years, I took four years training while working as a Machinist. I moved around a lot working in many shops while working for a company that provides Machinist's to industry on a temporary basis from 2 weeks to a year at a time. I also had a couple long term positions including the Space Center at Boeing where I worked on ISS docking rings and lots of interesting defense items. Total 26 shops I have been paid to work in. After a pretty major back injury I had to find work that required less standing. This lead to a position as a Professor in a 2 year trade college. I designed and built a new program called CNC Machinist which was very successful. I retired in the Fall of 2020. I am now going to build and sell cameras I have been designing since 1977.
Now I am moving my wife and I, our fully equipped machine shop, our woodworking shop, our pro darkroom, our foundry, quilting and sewing craft room, a full microscopy room with measuring, petrographic, stereo and research grade optical transmission microscopes, microtome and microtome knife sharpener, plus all the junk a family normally has from Tacoma WA to Patterson MO, where the air is not only very clear as in no smog, we are 27 miles from the nearest town, population 285 so there is virtually NO light pollution. Now is the time to get into astronomy, a lifelong dream I have never pursued.
All of my life I have been fascinated by mechanical things that extend my ability to see. I have always loved microscopes. Telescopes have always been part of my stuff, from Leupold products for another of my hobbies, to a Meade ETX90 which I enjoyed but hated setting up and tearing down and hauling back and forth to the desert. Now I am planning an observatory with a cast concrete pier smack in the center of some of the least polluted skies in the USA. That is as far as it has gotten, planning the pier. Eventually, I am hoping for a large diameter cat like a C14 for planetary astrophotography, and a medium sized APO refractor for nebulae.
Thanks to everyone for letting us glimpse them.
Barry Young aka "Big Louie"
Young Camera Company