When I bought my dob, I shopped around without knowing much about the various manufacturers other than Orion, Meade, and Celestron could be trusted. I counted Meade out because their manufacturing plant is in Mexico. Celestron's bigger scopes were in the really expensive category, and Orion was made in good old Watsonville, in California, in the US of A. So I went with them. After much delay, the UPS man delivered several large cartons from Orion. They all said "Made in China" on them. So much for buying American made products. Just to confuse everyone further, all this reminds me of the time when I was a little kid and, on those rare occasions when I arose early enough to get to school on time, I heard the early morning broadcasts on WGN, the Chicago Tribune radio station. WGN was always bragging about how they were a "clear channel" station. In those days before Clear Channel Communications company was formed to buy up as many radio stations in the nation as they could, "clear channel" meant that the FCC had granted a particular frequency (WGN was at 780kc) to a single station, so that, when atmospheric conditions warranted, there would be no crosstalk between that station and another sharing the same frequency. For people living in rural America, this was most important because radio was the most important means of getting major news out to the hinterlands. Early in the ayem, WGN began the broadcast day with a guy named Aureeyun Samuelson telling the great unwashed multitudes of Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and even downstate Illinois, just how much they could expect that day if they sold their hog bellies, corn, wheat, and kumquats in the financial markets. To farmers, this was extremely important news. Many years later, after television was invented, Mr. Samuelson began to appear on WGN-TV, often telling the same things to the public that he had previously on the radio. He would also fill in occasionally for some right-wing commentator who was on vacation (these guys weren't nearly as right back then as they are today, BTW), and it was a bit disconcerting to hear political babble coming from the same mouth from which I had previously only heard straight news. What really threw me for a loop, though, was the slide that appeared at the beginning of the show that stated Mr. Samuelson's first and last names. It seems that Aureeyun was spelled O-r-i-o-n. I just thought you all needed to know that.