I have been involved in astronomy since I was about 8 years old. I was fortunate to have grand parents that were amateur astronomers. I remember warm summer nights in the 1960's, at the eyepiece of my grandfather's 4"Unitron. I was addicted at an early age.

By the 1970's I had already built numerous telescopes of all sizes and shapes. The 1980's introduced me to astrophotography. I spent about 10 years taking (film) astro-pictures. During the 80's, I realized that off the shelf commercial mounts were poor performers with regards to tracking.

In the late 80's I began building my own mounts. As skills improved, friends began wanting me to build mounts for them as well. Mount building began to snowball.

In 1990 I started Mountain Instruments on a part time basis. In about 1992, I acquired the license to continue the Thomas Mathis line of mounts (owner of Carina Software and Mathis-Instruments). He was, and remains, my friend and mentor. Mountain Instruments became my full time occupation in 1996. In 1998 we acquired CNC machining capabilities.

Although the Mathis line of mounts were predominately large mounts, he had started a smaller version. I refined it over the course of about two years. In 1994 Mountain Instruments introduced the MI-250. It was a manual mount back then (non go-to). They became a popular mount for the serious astrophotographer and CCD imager. Dozens of the MI-250 were built and sold.

As times changed, so did the demand for go-to mounts. Along with go-to functions, so did the demand for improved tracking for the CCD imager. Again, we set out to redesign the MI-250. Our goal was to produce a product that was not only capable of precision tracking, it had to have sophisticated electronics, be visually pleasing, but also it needed user friendly functionality. It took nearly a year and a half of hard work before the first MI-250 Go-To was ready. We introduced it in early 2000. It has continuously undergone change and improvements. We chose the Losmandy Gemini go-to electronics for our MI-250.

In 2001 we constructed our own diamond lapping machine. We individually lap each and every RA worm and gear assembly as a matched set. This has improved the tracking performance enormously. Our mounts typically track between 4-5 arc seconds of periodic error. We star test every mount prior to shipping.

As with any company, there are occasional glitches and bugs. We at Mountain Instruments take great pride in our reputation for providing outstanding customer service. We normally jump through hoops to satisfy the needs of our customers. After all, what is a company without pleased customers?

In summary, we want to thank all of our customers for their support, ideas, feedback and friendship. Our goal has been and remains, to provide you with the best product in it's price range.