[2] Initial observers included David Crawford, Nicholas Mayall, and Arthur Hoag.

It is made from a two-foot (61 cm (24 in)) thick fused quartz disk that is supported in an advanced-design mirror cell.

The identical Víctor M. Blanco Telescope was later built at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, in Chile.

[8] The telescope was named after Mayall who was the director of Kitt Peak National Observatory for over a decade.

[8] Examples of instruments over its lifetime include various spectrographs, Cryogenic Camera, the Phoenix spectrometer, and the DLIRIM.

[12] Over the time of its operation 10,000 spectra were taken of 800 different astronomical targets, and these were made available in the SpArc data archive in the early 21st century.

[13][14] Planned to examine the nature of millions of galaxies and quasars, the instrument has been a decade in construction and features contributions from hundreds of researchers.

[18] The study included observation of monodeutered methane on Titan, a moon of Saturn noted for its thick atmosphere.