Meniscus corrector

There are Maksutov variations that use the same principle but place the meniscus lens as a sub-aperture corrector near the focus of the objective.

The idea of using the spherical aberration of a meniscus lens to correct the opposite aberration in a spherical objective dates back as far as W. F. Hamilton’s 1814 Hamiltonian telescope, in Colonel A. Mangin's 1876 Mangin mirror, and also appears in Ludwig Schupmann’s Schupmann medial telescope near the end of the 19th century.

After the invention of the wide-field Schmidt camera in the early 1930s, at least four optical designers in early 1940s war-torn Europe came up with the idea of replacing the complicated Schmidt corrector plate with a simpler meniscus lens, including Albert Bouwers, Dmitri Dmitrievich Maksutov, K. Penning, and Dennis Gabor.

His design had the mirror and meniscus lens with surfaces that had a common centre of curvature, called a "concentric" or "monocentric" telescope.

The design had an ultrawide field of view but did not correct chromatic aberration and was only suitable as a monochromatic astronomical camera.