Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Origins of The Telescope
The Origins of The Telescope
The series History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands presents studies on a
variety of subjects in the history of science, scholarship and academic institutions
in the Netherlands.
Editorial Board
K. van Berkel, University of Groningen
D. van Delft, Museum Boerhaave / Leiden University
W.Th.M. Frijhoff, VU University of Amsterdam
A. van Helden, Utrecht University
W.E. Krul, University of Groningen
A. de Swaan, Amsterdam School of Sociological Research
R.P.W. Visser, Utrecht University
W.W. Mijnhardt, Utrecht University
ii voettekst
The origins of the telescope
Edited by
Albert Van Helden
Sven Dupré
Rob van Gent
Huib Zuidervaart
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustra-
tions reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights
to this material is advised to contact the publisher.
Cover illustration:
Emblematic representation of an early Dutch telescope, taken from:
Johan de Brune, Emblemata of zinne-werck (Amsterdam/Middelburg 1624).
iv voettekst
Contents
Introduction 1
Huib J. Zuidervaart
The ‘true inventor’ of the telescope. A survey of 400 years of debate 9
Rienk Vermij
The telescope at the court of the stadtholder Maurits 73
Rolf Willach
The long road to the invention of the telescope 93
Katrien Vanagt
Suspicious spectacles. Medical perspectives on eyeglasses,
the case of Hieronymus Mercurialis 115
Sven Dupré
William Bourne’s invention. Projecting a telescope and optical
speculation in Elizabethan England 129
A. Mark Smith
Alhacen and Kepler and the origins of modern lens-theory 147
Eileen Reeves
Complete inventions: The mirror and the telescope 167
Mario Biagioli
Did Galileo copy the telescope? A ‘new’ letter by Paolo Sarpi 203
contents v
Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis
Labour on lenses: Isaac Beeckman’s notes on lens making 257
Giuseppe Molesini
Testing telescope optics of seventeenth-century Italy 271
Antoni Malet
Kepler’s legacy: telescopes and geometrical optics, 1611-1669 281
Henk Zoomers
The Netherlands, Siam and the telescope.
The first Asian encounter with a Dutch invention 301
Albert Clement
Music as a liberal art and the invention of the telescope 321
Bibliography 341
Index 363
vi contents
Introduction
1
Album Amicorum of Ernst Brinck (c. 1582-1649), Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague. Sign. 135
K 4, fol. 63r. The transcription of Galilei’s entry in Brick’s Album Amicorum states: ‘An: 1614. D.
19 Novembris | Ut Nobili, ac generoso studio | D: Ernesti Brinckii rem grata | facerem Galileus Galileis
Flo- | rentius manu propria scripti | Florentie. Cf. Thomassen, Alba Amicorum (1990), 71-72.
2
Van Helden, ‘The telescope in the seventeenth century’ (1974), 57.
paved the way for other scientific instruments which also emerged in the
course of the seventeenth century, such as the air pump, the barometer, and
the microscope. The emergence of the telescope was an important episode in
the history of science and technology not only because it marks the invention
of a new device, or because it changed man’s image of the universe, but also
because it helped change the ways in which natural philosophy was practiced
and what counted as ‘science.’ It is for this reason that we considered it appro-
priate to organize a conference at the Roosevelt Academy in Middelburg on 25
September 2008, exactly 400 years after the spectacle-maker Hans Lipperhey
of this same city received a letter of recommendation to the national govern-
ment in The Hague to demonstrate some ‘sights of glasses’ with which ‘one can
see all things very far as if they were close by.’3 The conference was organized
in cooperation with the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences in The Hague and Ghent University in Belgium. It was
supported by the Province of Zeeland and the city of Middelburg.
3
See the illustration of the minute of Lipperhey's letter of recommendation of 25 September 1608
in: Zuidervaart, ill. 1, elsewhere in this volume.
2 introduction
The search for the inventor of the telescope has a long tradition which be-
gan almost immediately after the invention of the instrument. In Telescopium,
the earliest book on the telescope, published in 1618, but composed in 1612,
Girolamo Sirtori already doubts whether Lipperhey, the first demonstrator of
the instrument, was also the inventor of the device:
In the year 1609 [sic] there appeared a genius or some other man, as yet unknown, of
the race of Hollanders, who, in Middelburg in Zeeland, visited Johannes Lippersein,
a man distinguished from others by his remarkable appearance, and a spectacle maker.
There was no other [spectacle-maker] in that city, and he ordered many lenses to be
made, concave as well as convex. On the agreed day he returned, eager for the fin-
ished work, and as soon as he had them before him, raising two of them up, namely
a concave and a convex one, he put the one and the other before his eye and slowly
moved them to and fro, either to test the gathering point or the workmanship, and
after that he left, having paid the maker. The artisan, by no means devoid of ingenuity,
and curious about the novelty began to do the same and to imitate the customer, and
quickly his wit suggested that these lenses should be joined together in a tube. And as
soon as he had completed one, he rushed to the court of Prince Maurits and showed
him the invention.4
Since then, the search for the inventor of the telescope has continued un-
abated. One of the most famous and early examples of the genre is Pierre
Borel’s De Vero Telescopii Inventore (1656), or ‘the true inventor of the tele-
scope.’ In the first paper of this book Huib Zuidervaart shows how the idea
that there must have been one true inventor, who at a well-defined moment
in time was responsible for the invention of the telescope has guided, or better
misguided, historical investigations until three decades ago.
Times began to change when in 1974 Albert Van Helden published a
paper on ‘The Telescope in the Seventeenth Century’ in Isis. Van Helden’s
starting point was the book De uitvinding der verrekijkers, written in 1906
by the Dutch scholar Cornelis de Waard, who, on the basis of new archi-
val sources maintained that the telescope was invented around 1590, in Italy,
from where it moved (in an unknown way) to the Netherlands, probably as
nothing more than an optical toy. According to De Waard, the device had re-
mained almost unknown until its usefulness became common knowledge, be-
cause of Lipperhey’s 1608 patent application and the relating demonstration at
Count Maurits’ court in The Hague. De Waard’s analysis however was far from
4
Sirtori, Telescopium (1618), as translated by Van Helden, ‘The Invention’ (1977), 50.
introduction 3
unproblematic. In 1975 Van Helden summarized the remaining problems in
his paper ‘The Historical Problem of the Invention of the Telescope.’ Although
the archival and printed evidence relating to the invention of the telescope was
fairly extensive, it remained inadequate in several crucial areas. Moreover, Van
Helden wrote that ‘it varies from the unimpeachable to the patently false. The
problem has something for the positivist as well as for the weaver of plausible
theories.’5 He concluded – against De Waard – that the available evidence
‘does not necessarily commit us to believing that the telescope was invented
in Italy around 1590.’6 But we do not know who invented the telescope, and
when, because, ‘the instrument was there before the world knew it.’7
In 1977 Van Helden repeated De Waard’s efforts by collecting all the then
known sources about early telescopic devices, and he published a translation of
these documents, for the first time into English. The Invention of the Telescope
also contained Van Helden’s own account of the happenings of 1608. He con-
cluded that the Lipperhey letter of 25 September 1608 indeed was the earliest
traceable ‘undeniable mention of a telescope,’ but his analysis also demonstrat-
ed the extreme complexity of the process that had led to the invention of the
instrument. Van Helden concluded that ‘to award the honor of the invention
to Lipperhey solely on that basis is an exercise in historical positivism.’8 Many
others had paved the path, or had developed the instrument further, and by
doing so these artisans and scholars eventually had made an optical toy into a
useful instrument for obtaining new knowledge. With Van Helden’s interven-
tion the question shifted from ‘who was the first and true inventor of the tele-
scope’ to how the instrument was developed. The reconstruction of the long
and complex process of the invention of the telescope, and the identification
of the multiple technical, mathematical, and social origins of the telescope is
also the aim of this book.
The editors of this volume felt that such a collection was much needed,
because of the shifts in the historiography of science and technology in the
past decades since Van Helden’s seminal The Invention of the Telescope, and be-
cause of new findings and revisionist accounts on the history of the telescope,
especially in the past two decades (after a long silence following the publica-
tion of The Invention of the Telescope). Most authors responsible for the new
perspectives brought to the invention of the telescope have contributed to this
5
Van Helden, ‘The Historical Problem of the Invention of the Telescope’ (1975), 251.
6
Ibidem, 259.
7
Ibidem, 255.
8
Van Helden, ‘The Invention’ (1977), 25.
4 introduction
volume on The Origins of the Telescope, often with papers which summarize the
gist of their arguments. New perspectives have primarily been offered by the
study of the material culture of science – in this case, the eyeglasses and the
telescope lenses, to which the late Vincent Ilardi drew attention in Renaissance
Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes.9 The catalogue of the oldest telescopes (that
is, of the first half of the seventeenth century) – many of which were previ-
ously unknown – which Marvin Bolt and Michael Korey offer in this volume
is therefore a most valuable contribution that makes possible the study of ma-
terial objects which has produced new insights on lens-making techniques,
which are documented in this volume.
While historians’ attention to the material culture of science has blurred the
boundaries between the history of science and the history of technology and
between curatorial issues in museums and historical questions typically raised
in university departments, other new perspectives have blurred the boundaries
between context and cognition. In the past three decades since Van Helden’s
The Invention of the Telescope, historians of science have emphasized the local-
ity of practices of science and technology. Klaas van Berkel depicts the city
of Middelburg as a centre of learning, culture and business, attracting skilled
artisans such as glass-makers and painters from the Southern Netherlands,
who made the city a less unlikely place for the invention of the telescope.
The other locality that mattered to the early history of the telescope in the
Netherlands was the court of the Stadtholder Count Maurits of Nassau. Rienk
Vermij shows how Maurits’ court, ‘that was not really his court,’ and his pa-
tronage shaped the early reception of the instrument. Such contextualizations
bring us closer to answering why the Netherlands was such an important place
to the invention of the telescope.
Moreover, in reaction to historians’ emphasis on the radical locality of sci-
ence and technology, more recent historiography has stressed the circulation
of knowledge.10 The early history of telescope is perfectly suited to illustrate
the force of this concept. Already in 1977 Van Helden noted that the telescope
was never invented – in the sense that it was not invented in a single place by
one single inventor. This book brings out that the telescope was the result of
9
Ilardi, ‘Eyeglasses and concave lenses in fifteenth-century Florence and Milan’ (1976); idem,
Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia, 2007); Willach, ‘The Development
of Lens Grinding and Polishing Techniques’ (2001); idem, ‘Der lange Weg zur Erfindung des
Fernrohres’ (2007), translated into English as Willach (2008).
10
For the notion of ‘circulation of knowledge,’ see Secord, ‘Knowledge in Transit’ (2004); Raj,
Relocating Modern Science (2007); Schaffer et al., The Brokered World (2009); Dupré &Lüthy, Silent
Messengers (forthcoming).
introduction 5
the piece-meal connection of distributed and different bodies of material and
textual, practical and theoretical, mathematical and cultural bodies of knowl-
edge, packaged and re-packaged when the instrument moved from one place
to another. It is for this reason that the title of this book is not ‘the invention
of the telescope,’ but ‘the origins – plural – of the telescope.’ Moreover, in this
process of circulation not only the instrument that came to be known as ‘the
telescope’ was invented; as Mario Biagioli points out in his contribution to this
volume, Galileo also invented new meanings of ‘invention’ and ‘telescope’ in
the process. Thus, the question of priority – who is the true inventor – is not
only the less interesting question; it is also the wrong question – because in
the sense underlying this question, the telescope itself fails to be invented. It is
worth pointing this out again and again, since the celebrations of the past years
also elicited the all too familiar stories mixing priority claims with national
pride – of which the claim for the Spanish invention of the telescope made
most waves in the media.11 However, the work of the sixteenth-century Juan
Roget is important, not so much because we would be allowed to attribute the
invention of the telescope to him, but because – as Tom Settle has recently
argued – Roget’s work tells us more about the circulation of the know-how of
lens-making from which the telescope originated.12
So, which narrative on the origins of the telescope does emerge three dec-
ades after Van Helden’s The Invention of the Telescope? Several chapters in this
book tell us much more on (in Van Helden’s terms of 1977) ‘the prehistory of
the telescope.’ Rolf Willach’s contributions to this volume and elsewhere have
established the degree of progress of the craft of spectacle-making from the
invention of eyeglasses in the thirteenth century. By means of modern optical
measurements on a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century spectacle-lens-
es, Willach has demonstrated that only in the early decades of the sixteenth
century – but not before – the craft of lens-grinding had evolved enough to
produce recognizable telescopic images. While Willach claims that the ‘secret’
was in stopping down the objective lens to a small aperture, optical knowledge
steered sixteenth-century mathematicians in exactly the opposite direction.
The contributions of Sven Dupré and Eileen Reeves show that the theoretical
11
Pelling, ‘Who Invented the Telescope?’ (2008). Pelling’s paper was based on two Spanish articles,
published earlier by De Guilleuma, ‘Juan Roget’ (1958) and idem, ‘Juan Roget, Optico Espanol
Inventor del Telescopio’ (1960) See also Pelling’s 2009-web-blog on the topic, in which he has
put some question marks unto the archival accuracy of De Guilleuma, on www.ciphermyster-
ies.com/2009/06/21/the-juan-roget-telescope-inventor-theory-revisited (consulted on 3 January
2010).
12
Settle, ‘The invention of the telescope. The studies of dr. Josep M. Simon de Guilleuma’ (2009).
6 introduction
Perspectivist tradition connected with the speculative magical and mathemat-
ical literature of the sixteenth century made contempories believe that the
production of large diameter mirrors was the way to the telescope.13 In Italy,
Ettore Ausonio, Giambaptista della Porta, Giovanni Antonio Magini, Paolo
Sarpi, and Galilei Galileo, had investigated the properties of concave mirrors
in an effort to produce a powerful telescopic device.14 What is known today,
but was not understood in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, is that
optical mirrors require a far more precise shape in order to produce recogniz-
able images than lenses. But as Eileen Reeves shows in her contribution to this
volume, the idea of the telescopic mirror had a long literary after-life.
The telescopic mirror also was the subject of sustained optical speculation in
Elizabethan England. In the early 1990s Colin Ronan launched the idea of the
‘Elizabethan Telescope’ produced by Thomas Digges and William Bourne, an
apprentice of Leonard Digges, in the late sixteenth century. However, Ronan’s
‘reconstruction’ of the alleged instruments was ‘quite removed from the reality
of the 16th century,’ according to Gerard L’Estrange Turner, who concluded
that in Elizabethan England, ‘there was neither the conceptual framework nor
the technical capacity to make such an instrument.’15 In his contribution to
this volume, Dupré reconstructs Bourne’s conceptual framework. In contrast
to Turner, he argues that Bourne’s design – and his desire for large diameter
optics in particular – was based on his understanding of the optical knowledge
of his time. Such a design, indeed, failed on the technical capacities of the
Elizabethans (or any other spectacle-maker anywhere else at the time). While
Bourne had a wrong idea of how a lens or a mirror magnified, A. Mark Smith
shows that Johannes Kepler, and not the 11th-century Arab mathematician
Alhacen, should be considered the father of modern lens-theory. Crucial ele-
ments of Kepler’s analysis were missing in Alhacen. Understanding the op-
tics of lenses and magnification was thus less self-evident than we might have
thought; neither was the appropriation of eyeglasses in the context of medicine
self-evident. Katrien Vanagt argues that eyeglasses were not the only therapeu-
tical option and that physicians struggled with understanding their optical
workings. Together, these contributions show that nothing in medicine and
13
Dupré, ‘Mathematical Instruments and the Theory of the Concave Spherical Mirror:’ (2000);
idem, Ausonio’s Mirrors and Galileo’s Lenses’ (2005); Dupré, ‘The Making of Practical Optics’
(2009); Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks: The Telescope and the Mirror (2008).
14
Van Helden, ‘Invention of the telescope (until 1630)’ (1997); idem, ‘Introduction to the second
printing’ (2008); idem, ‘Who invented the telescope?’ (2009).
15
Ronan, ‘The Origins of the Reflecting Telescope’ (1991); idem, ‘There was an Elizabethan
Telescope’ (1993); Turner, ‘There was no Elizabethan Telescope’ (1993), 5.
introduction 7
optics prepared a blue-print of the instrument later called ‘the telescope.’
When Galileo first encountered the instrument, ‘the telescope’ was still in
the making. In his contribution to this volume Mario Biagioli shows that con-
trary to his own later words Galileo probably saw a copy of a real instrument in
the hands of his friend Paolo Sarpi before he presented his own instrument to
the Doge of Venice. Albert Van Helden discusses how Galileo turned this de-
vice useful for military purposes into an instrument for astronomical observ-
ing. However, astronomy was not the only field in which the telescope caused
changes in the hands of its first users. First, the telescope had an enormous
impact on the craft of lens-making because of the quality demands which
telescope lenses imposed, which were much higher than for eyeglasses. Fokko
Jan Dijksterhuis taps the notebooks of Isaac Beeckman to show how Descartes’
friend struggled with new and not-so-new lens-making techniques. Giuseppe
Molesini studies surviving telescope lenses to reconstruct the lens-making tech-
niques of Torricelli and other 17th-century Italian telescope makers. Second,
in the field of optics, Antoni Malet’s contribution to this volume discusses
the legacy of the first theory of the telescope by Kepler. Contrary to received
opinion, he argues, Kepler was a determining factor who shaped optical theory
until the 1660s, when a new concept of optical imagery emerged. Third, the
telescope was important to navigation. Henk Zoomers shows in this volume
how through the channels of the Dutch East India Company the telescope
travelled as far as Southeast Asia. Finally, Albert Clement, the representative of
the 2008-conference’s host (the Middelburg Roosevelt Academy), highlights
how the telescope was even influential in music. In all those disciplines, enter-
prises and fields of endeavour the telescope acquired new functions and mean-
ings, and in this process of circulation and appropriation, the contributions to
this book bring out, ‘the telescope’ as a cultural artefact was continually made
and re-made.
8 introduction
The ‘true inventor’ of the telescope.
A survey of 400 years of debate
Huib J. Zuidervaart
There is no nation which has not claimed for itself the remarkable invention
of the telescope: indeed, the French, Spanish, English, Italians, and Hollanders
have all maintained that they did this.
1
Over the years the following candidates have been proposed as the ‘inventor of the telescope’:
(1) from the Netherlands: Hans Lipperhey, Jacob Adriaensz Metius, Zacharias Jansen and Cornelis
Drebbel, to which in this paper – just for the sake of argument – I will add the name ‘Lowys
Lowyssen, geseyt Henricxen brilmakers’; (2) from Italy: Girolamo Fracastoro, Raffael Gualterotti,
Giovanni Baptista Della Porta and Galileo Galilei; from (3) England: Roger Bacon, Leonard Digges
and William Bourne (4) from Germany Jacobus Velser and Simon Marius; (5) from Spain: Juan
Roget, and (6) from the Arabian world: Abul Hasan, also known as Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haith-
am. Cf. Van Helden, ‘The Historical Problem of the Invention of the Telescope’ (1975) and idem,
The Invention of the Telescope (1977).
2
Pelling, ‘Who Invented the Telescope?’ (2008). Pelling’s paper was based on two Spanish articles,
published earlier by De Guilleuma, ‘Juan Roget’ (1958) and idem, ‘Juan Roget, Optico Espanol
Inventor del Telescopio’ (1960). See also: Settle, ‘The invention of the telescope. The studies of dr.
Josep M. Simon de Guilleuma’ (2009).
It appeared that this conception was in the minds of many men, so that once they
heard about it, any ingenious person began trying to make one, without [the help of ]
a model.7
3
For instance: ‘New focus shows Spaniard, not Dutchman, invented telescope,’ The Guardian
(Monday 15 September 2008).
4
See about the phrase ‘cultural nationalism’: Bank, Roemrijk vaderland (1990); Van Berkel,
‘Natuurwetenschap en cultureel nationalisme in negentiende-eeuws Nederland’ (1991).
5
Fracastoro, Homocentrica (1538), 18v, cited from the English translation by Van Helden, Invention
(1977), 28.
6
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 24.
7
Sirtori, Telescopium, cited from the English translation by Van Helden, Invention (1977), 50.
Although the book was published in 1618, the text was written in 1612. Cf. De Waard, Uitvinding
(1906), 192.
10 huib j. zuidervaart
Antonius Maria Schyrlaeus de Rheita, who commented on the events of 1608
that in that year ‘a joke was put into a serious thing.’8 Indeed 400 years ago,
in September 1608, the telescope was recognized as a useful device. As Rolf
Willach has argued recently, and will outline again in this volume, most likely
this breakthrough became possible after a small but crucial adaptation of the
instrument, the addition of a diaphragm.9
Thus in September 2008 we commemorated, not the invention of the tele-
scope, but rather the birth of this device as a functional scientific instrument:
the first of its kind in Modern History! For from September 1608 onwards
the general recognition of the existence and potential of the telescope and the
rapid dissemination and circulation of this knowledge throughout Europe can
be followed rather precisely, starting at the instrument’s demonstration in The
Hague and culminating inter alia in Galileo Galilei’s spectacular astronomi-
cal discoveries with his ‘Belga Perspicillum’10 or ‘Dutch telescope’ in the years
1609 and 1610. For modern history of science this well documented circula-
tion of newly emerged knowledge is far more important, than any priority
dispute.
The bearer of this letter declares to have [found] a certain art with which one can see
all things very far away as if they were nearby, by means of sights of glasses, which he
pretends to be a new invention.11 (See ill. 1)
8
Schyrlaeus de Rheita, Oculus Enoch et Eliae (1645), I, 337-338; cited from the English translation
by Van Helden, Invention (1977), 54.
9
Willach, ‘Der lange Weg’ (2007); idem, The Long Route (2008).
10
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 45.
11
‘Die verclaert seekere conste te hebben daer mede men seer verre alle dingen can sien al oft die
naer bij waeren bij middel van gesichten van glasen, dewelke hij pretendeert een niewe inventie is.’
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 35-36.
The archives of the States General in The Hague reveal that ‘the bearer of
this letter’ was in fact the Middelburg spectacle maker Hans Lipperhey, born
in Wesel ca. 1570, married in Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, in 1594
and, a citizen (‘poorter’) of that city since 1602.12 It was Lipperhey’s inten-
tion to present his ‘art’ to the authorities of the young Dutch Republic in The
Hague, and request a patent for this device.
At that very moment The Hague was a city crowded with diplomats from
all over Europe. In February 1608 a peace conference had started in The Hague
between the Dutch authorities and representatives of the former sovereign of
the Netherlands, the King of Spain. In 1609 these negotiations would lead to
a long cease-fire, a period which would become known in Dutch history as
the ‘Twelve-Year Truce.’ The main negotiator for the Spanish sovereign was
Ambrogio de Spinola, (later Marquis of Los Balbases), commander-in-chief
of the Spanish army in the Low Countries. As the Spanish-Dutch negotia-
tions were coming to an end, he was preparing to depart from The Hague on
30 September in order to report to his direct superior, Archduke Albertus of
Austria in Brussels, viceroy of the part of the old Burgundian territory still
ruled by Spain.
12
De Waard, Uitvinding (1906), 109-110.
12 huib j. zuidervaart
Ill. 2. The Maurits Tower in The Hague. Drawing in charcoal by Willem Pietersz.
Buytewech (c. 1585-1627) [Municipal Archives, The Hague].
But shortly before Spinola’s departure, his Dutch host and counterpart as
commander-in-chief of the Dutch army, Count Maurits of Nassau, (Prince of
Orange after 1618), Stadtholder of the rebelling Dutch Republic, invited him
to witness a curious demonstration of a device brought to The Hague by ‘a
humble and God-fearing man’ from Middelburg. The demonstration, which
was attended by a few other officials, including Maurits’ half-brother and suc-
cessor Frederik Hendrik, took place on the nearby ‘Maurits tower’ (ill. 2),
built a few years before in a corner of the ‘Stadhouderlijk Kwartier,’ the gov-
ernmental palace. Today it is the seat of the both houses of parliament of the
Netherlands (still called the ‘States General’); in 1608 it contained not only
the princely headquarters, but was also the site of the peace conference. A con-
temporary newsletter presents us with the following account of this event:
A few days before the departure of Spinola from The Hague a spectacle-maker from
Middelburg, a humble and God-fearing man, presented to His Excellency [Count
Maurits], certain glasses by means of which one can detect and see distinctly things
three or four miles removed from us as if we were seeing them from a hundred paces.
From the Tower in The Hague, one clearly sees, with the said glasses the Clock of
The last passage of the pamphlet probably is the most interesting, because
this very first account of the telescope already revealed the full potential of the
instrument:
The said glasses are very useful in sieges and similar occasions, for from a mile or
more away one can detect all things as distinctly as if they were very close to us. And
even the stars which ordinarily are invisible to our sight and our eyes, because of their
smallness and the weakness of our sight, can be seen by means of this instrument.16
The archives of the States General confirm that Lipperhey received 300
guilders for his device. And although on 2 October, he had asked a thousand
guilders for each telescope he made, on 5 October, after an examination of the
instrument by a few deputies of the States General the day before, he settled
for a much lower price. That day Lipperhey received a down payment of 300
guilders, with the promise to receive another 600 guilders when he delivered
three more of these instruments. The conditions stipulated that he would not
make such a device for other parties and he was requested to improve the
13
In fact there were (and still are) two church towers with large clock dials in Delft: one at the
‘Oude Kerk’ (Old Church), finished in 1240, and the other at the ‘Nieuwe Kerk’ (‘New Church),
finished in 1496. Both churches are located in the centre of the city, at a distance of some 10 kilo-
metres in a straight line from the Maurits Tower in The Hague.
14
In fact there were (and still are) two churches with large windows in Leiden: one at the ‘Hooglandse
Kerk’ and the other at the ‘St Pieters Kerk.’ Both Gothic churches are located in the centre of the
city, at a distance of c. 23 km in a straight line from the Maurits Tower in The Hague.
15
This pamphlet was first published by Drake, The Unsung Journalist (1976) and recently by
Zoomers & Zuidervaart, Embassies (2008).
16
Ibidem.
14 huib j. zuidervaart
instrument by making it suitable for two eyes, and using rock crystal or glass
of the very best quality for his lenses.17 Lipperhey delivered the first binocular
instrument in mid-December 1608, and the other two in February 1609. All
three instruments were considered to be working satisfactorily by the deputies
of the States General who had tested the instruments.18 The amount of 900
guilders Lipperhey received for his three instruments was large enough for him
to buy his neighbour’s house in Middelburg, which he appropriately named
‘The Three Telescopes’ (the ‘Dry Vare Gesichten’).19
17
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 36.
18
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 42. Lipperhey’s instrument was examined by the following depu-
ties of the States General: (1) Johan van Dorth (1574-1624) from Zutphen, deputy of the province
of Gelderland, (2) Jacob Simonsz. Magnus (1563-1625), from Middelburg, deputy of the prov-
ince of Zeeland, (3) Gerard van Renesse van der Aa (d. 1610), from Utrecht, deputy of the prov-
ince of Utrecht, (4) Tinco (van) Oenema (d. 1631) from Oudeschoot, deputy of the province of
Friesland, and (5) Jacob Andriesz. Boelens (1554-1621), from Amsterdam, deputy of the province
of Holland.
19
For references, see also Zuidervaart, ‘Uit Vaderlandsliefde’ (2007).
20
‘Is binnen ontboden... die men verstaet dat oock de conste soude hebben om instrumenten te
maecken om verre dingen nae bij te sien, ende is geordonneerd daerop te schrijven aende heeren
gedeputeerden.’ (‘Is invited inside … [the clerck has not filled in the name] of whom it is said that he
also has the art of making an instrument to see far away objects nearby’). Minutes of the Committee
of Councillors of Zeeland, 14 October, 1608. Middelburg, Archive Staten van Zeeland, no. 480, fol.
Lxxviiy. See: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 38.
21
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 39. See also Vermij, in this volume.
engineer coming from Count Maurits’ army, who was able to reproduce
Lipperhey’s instrument. For, as Jeannin stated in his letter to the French king:
‘there is no great difficulty in imitating that first invention.’22
22
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 43: ‘aussi n’y a-il pas grande difficulté imiter cette premiere invention.’
23
Cf. Pantin, ‘La lunette astronomique’ (1995), 162; Sluiter, ‘The Telescope before Galileo’ (1997).
24
The French ambassador in The Hague, Pierre Jeannin, suggested in his letters that two of the
Lipperhey telescopes ordered by the States General were actually meant as a gift for the French king.
Cf. Van Helden, Invention (1977), 43.
16 huib j. zuidervaart
Ill. 4. Archduke Albertus of Austria, governor of the Southern Netherlands, observing
a bird with a telescope. Detail of a painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder, c. 1608-1611,
representing the archduke in front of his castle Mariemont in Hanaut (Belgium).
[Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, USA. The Adolph D. and Wilkins C.
Williams Fund. Photo Katherine Wetzel].
.
on a painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder, dated 1611, representing the arch-
duke in front of his castle Mariemont, near Brussels (ill. 4).25
In March 1609, the papal nuncius in Brussels, Guido Bentivoglio attended
a heron hunt organised for the archduke just outside the gates of that city, in
which one of these Brussels-made telescopes was tested. It amazed him how
‘miraculously’ the instrument performed, revealing details of a tower more
than ten miles away. Bentivoglio immediately ordered another copy to be
made, not for himself but for Pope Paul V, which instrument arrived in Rome
probably at the end of April 1609.26 That very month similar telescopes were
25
Hensen, ‘De verrekijkers van Prins Maurits en van Aartshertog Albertus’ (1923). In May 1609 a
sum of money was paid to the silversmith Robert Staes in Brussels for making two ‘tuyaux artificiels
pour veoir de loing.’ Cf. Houzeau, ‘Le telescope à Bruxelles’ (1885); De Waard, Uitvinding, 230. The
Brueghel-painting was signalled by Inge Keil in her Augustanus Opticus (2000) 268. See about the
painting, representing a view on the Mariemont Castle, now in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
USA, Inv. No. 53.10: Ertz & Nitze-Ertz (eds.), Brueghel (1997), 252-253.
26
The instrument was sent to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, papal secretary and nephew of Pope
Paul V. In August 1609 Borghese received from Galileo Galilei a telescope ‘similar to the one he had
received from Flanders.’ Cf. Sluiter, ‘The Telescope before Galileo’ (1997) and Galilei, Opere, 10
(1900), letter 234: Lorenzo Pignoria [from Padua] to Paolo Gualdo [in Rome], 31 August 1609.
27
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 43. Borel (1655) presents a certain Crepius from Sedan as one of
the claimants for the invention.
28
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 50, quoting Sirtori (1618).
29
Cf. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 226: Lorenzo Pignoria [from Padua] to Paolo Gualdo [in Rome],
1 August 1609. Cf. Biagioli, Galileo’s Instruments of Credit (2006), 121. See also Biagioli’s paper in this
volume.
30
Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 252: Giambaptista della Porta to Federico Cesi.
31
Simon Marius, Mundus Jovialis (Nurnberg 1614) 6verso. Cf. A.O. Prickard, ‘The ‘Mundus
Jovialis’ of Simon Marius,’ The Observatory 39 (1916) 371.
32
Ibidem. Prickard in his translation erroneously wrote the name as ‘John Baptist Leuccius.’
33
See for most examples: Sluiter, ‘The Telescope before Galileo’ (1997).
34
Chapman, ‘The Astronomical Work of Thomas Harriot’ (1995) 101.
35
Cf. ref. 29.
36
De Waard, Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman. Tome 1: 1604-1619, 11 note.
37
Cf. Vollgraff, ‘Brieven’ (1914); De Wreede, Willebrord Snellius (2007) 68-69. Concerning
a telescope Snellius had ordered for his relative Amelis van Rosendael (1557-1620), or Aemilius
Rosendalius in Latin. See also Zuidervaart, Telescopes from Leiden Observatory (2007), introduction.
38
Keil, Augustanus Opticus (2000) 33; Wattenberg, Fabricius (1964), 21-24.
39
Chapman, ‘The Astronomical Work of Thomas Harriot’ (1995) 102.
18 huib j. zuidervaart
II. THE PRIORITY QUESTION
Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Italians from everywhere rushed forward driven by the desire
for gain, and there was no one who would not claim himself the inventor.40
The man [Galilei] […] intends to be considered the inventor of that ingenious spy-
glass, despite the fact that some Dutchman, on a trip here through France, brought it
here first. It was shown to me and others, and after Galilei saw it, he made others in
imitation of it and, what is easy perhaps, made some improvements to what was already
invented.43
40
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 50.
41
Ibidem. See the citation in the introduction, elsewhere in this volume.
42
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 46.
43
Sluiter, ‘The Telescope before Galileo’ (1997) 211, citing Kepler, Gesammelte Werke (1937) xvi,
302. See about the question about Galilei’s attributed claim: Rosen, ‘Did Galilei Claim he Invented
the Telescope?’ (1954).
44
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 45.
45
Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), letter 231: Galileo [from Venice] to Benedetto Landucci [in Florence],
29 August 1609.
46
Waterbolk, ‘Van scherp zien en blind zijn’ (1995) Cf. Mulerius, Hemelsche trompet (1618): ‘Want
wyluyden connen se anders qualic sien, dan met behulp van de nieu gevonden bril.’ (‘Because we
could only see them properly with our newly invented spectacles’).
47
Winsemius, Chroniqve (1622).
20 huib j. zuidervaart
him by the same Winsemius, together with Jacobs portrait (since lost).48 Thus
already around 1625, several Dutch officials believed that Jacob Adriaensz
Metius was the inventor of the telescope, including the Dutch lawyer Hugo de
Groot (Grotius) and the poet-diplomat Constantijn Huygens.49
So when, in 1634, professor Adriaen Metius died, no one in the Netherlands
protested when Jacob Adriaensz was praised in Adriaen’s funeral eulogy at the
University of Franeker as the sole inventor of this famous ‘tubulus ille opticus.’50
For the rest of Europe, Metius’ fame as the inventor of the telescope was es-
tablished in 1637 by René Descartes in La Dioptrique, an appendix to his
famous Discours de la Methode, in which Descartes gave the following account
of Metius’ invention, a story he had probably heard from Adriaen Metius
himself, when, in 1629 as a student at Franeker University, he had attended
Metius’ lectures on optics:
It was about thirty years ago that a man named Jacob Metius, of the city of Alkmaar
in Holland, a man who had never studied, although he had a father and a brother who
made a profession of mathematics, but who took particular pleasure in making burn-
ing mirrors and glasses, even making them out of ice in the winter, as experience has
shown they can be made, having on that occasion several glasses of different shapes,
decided through luck to look through two of them, of which one was a little narrower
in the middle than at the edges, and the other, on the contrary, much thinner at the
edges than in the middle. And he put them so fortunately in two ends of a tube, that
the first of the telescopes, of which we are speaking, was put together. And it is entirely
based on this model that all the others which have been seen since have been made
without anyone yet, as far as I know, having sufficiently determined the shapes that
those glasses ought to have.51
48
Galilei, Opere, 16 (1906), letter 2858: Niccolò Fabri Di Peiresc to Galileo Galilei, 24 January 1634
and Gassendi, The Mirrour of True Nobility & Gentility (1657/2007). See also: Peiresc to Dupuy,
8 November 1626, in: De Larroque, Lettres de Peiresc, 1 (1888) 79-80, in which ‘Jaques Methius’ [=
Jacob Metius] is called ‘Le vray inventeur primitif ’ of the ‘nouvelles lunettes de Galilee.’
49
Hugo de Groot to his brother Willem de Groot, 10 June 1622, cited by Tierie, Cornelis Drebbel
(1932) 19, 97; Worp, Briefwisseling Constantijn Huygens (1911-1917), letter no. 1270 (29 October
1635).
50
Waterbolk (1995) 198, citing from: Winsemius, Oratio fvnebris (1634).
51
Descartes, La Dioptrique (1637), translated from the Dutch edition by J.H. Glazemaker of
1659.
This man lived in Middelburg in the Capoen Street, on the left side coming from the
Green Market, in about the middle of the block, in the little houses against the New
Church. He was a man of small means, had a modest shop, and many children, whom
I still saw afterwards when I came back to Middelburg when I was older.57
52
Cf. Chabbert, ‘Pierre Borel’ (1968).
53
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 55.
54
Ibidem.
55
Ibidem.
56
Borel, De vero telescopii inventore (1656). See also Nellissen, ‘De echte uitvinder van de telescoop’
(2007).
57
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 55.
22 huib j. zuidervaart
shop, fitted exactly with that of the late Hans Lipperhey and the location of
his former spectacle workshop in the Middelburg ‘Capoenstraat.’ Lipperhey
had indeed been a modest man, and had had at least seven children.58 So
Blondel rather quickly succeeded in finding three witnesses, a former son-in-
law and two former neighbours, all of whom confirmed that Hans Lipperhey
(or Laprey59) had indeed constructed ‘verresiende brillen oft verrekijckers’ in
his shop at the Capoen Street, having a sign representing some telescopes. So
everything seemed to confirm Boreel’s initial memory.
However, at the end of January 1655, just before the investigation ended,
two new witnesses suddenly stepped forward, presenting a completely differ-
ent account of what had happened some fifty years before. The main witness
was Johannes Sachariassen,60 a skilled lens grinder living in Middelburg, who
58
The exact location of the houses of Lipperhey and Jansen was found by C.J. Serlé in 1816. He
also found that only four of Lipperhey’s children (Susanna, Claes, Hans junior and Abraham) were
still alive at the time of his death. See about the eldest daughter also: Zeeuws Archief, Middelburg,
Rechterlijk Archief Zeeuwse Eilanden, no. 115a, folio 69verso. (Deed of the Middelburg Orphans
Chamber, concerning Susanna Lipperhey, dated 4 January 1636).
59
Over the years the family name ‘Lipperhey’ appears to have changed into ‘Laprij’ or ‘Lapree.’ In
the early eighteenth century several members of this family were living in Vlissingen (Flushing).
60
Johannes Sachariassen (1611- before 1659) was the son of Zacharias Jansen and Catharina de
Haene. Already at the age of 19, in April 1630, he is mentioned as a ‘brilmaker.’ At that time he
bought some ‘Neurenburgeryen,’ most probably referring to toys. In 1632 he married with Sara du
Pril (overl. 1659) from Veere, widow of Marten Goverts. At this occasion his aunt Sara Boussé [=
Bouché] testified that both his parents were dead. In 1634 Beeckman received from Sachariassen
some lessons in the grinding of lenses, in his Middelburg glass grinding workshop. This shop was
probably in the ‘Sint Janstraat,’ where his widow in 1659 died. Cf. De Waard, Uitvinding (1906),
153 and 333; De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 4 (1953), passim. Zeeuws Archief, Middelburg, Archief
Rekenkamer van Zeeland D (list receivers of the ‘collaterale successie’), 8 March 1659.
61
Zacharias (or Sacharias) Jansen (or Janssen) [various spellings were used at the time] was born in
1585 in The Hague. His parents were Hans Martens and Maeyken Meertens, both probably com-
ing from Antwerp. In 1610 he married in Middelburg with Catharina (or Catelijntjen) de Haene
from this same city. In 1611 their only son Johannes Sachariassen was born. In 1616 Zacharias was
mentioned for the first time as a ‘brilmaker.’ He had probably inherited the tools of the late Lowys
Lowyssen, ‘geseyt Henricxen brilmakers,’ for in 1615 he was appointed guardian of the two children
of this spectacle maker. In 1618 the couple Jansen-De Haene moved to nearby Arnemuiden, after
Zacharias has been exposed as a counterfeiter. In 1619, in Arnemuiden, he was again accused for the
same offence, together with the local ‘schout’ (the head of the justice department). After being on
the run for a while, Zacharias Jansen returned to Middelburg in 1621, where he bought a house. In
1626 he was engaged in legal proceedings, being accused of not paying his mortgage. In 1624 his
wife died, after which he remarried in August 1625 with Anna Couget from Antwerp, the widow
of Willem Jansen (perhaps a relative). With her, Zacharias ‘den brillenmaker’ moved to Amsterdam,
where in November 1626 he rented part of the ‘Huis onder ’t Zeil’ at the Dam Square. But in
May 1628 he was declared bankrupt. Jansen must have died before 1632, for in that year his sister
testified that he was dead. Cf. De Waard, Uitvinding (1906); Breen, ‘Topographische geschiede-
nis’ (1909), 183, 188 and Wijnman, ‘Sacharias Jansen te Amsterdam’ (1933) and idem, ‘Nogmaals
Sacharias Jansen’ (1934).
62
Sara Goedaert (born Sara Jansz), was the only sister of Zacharias Jansen. With her brother she is
mentioned in 1622 as the owner of the small house, built against the wall of the ‘Nieuwe Kerk’ at
the ‘Groenmarkt’ in Middelburg. Her late husband, Jacob Goedaert, ‘of Embden’ had worked at the
Mint, which was located in a neighbouring abbey. In August 1625 Sara Goedaert was a witness at
the second marriage of her brother Zacharias Jansen and Anna Couget of Antwerp. In October of
the same year she herself remarried with Abraham Bouché, also from Antwerp. In July 1632 she was
mentioned again as a widow, after when she returned to bear the former name of her first husband,
Jacob Goedaert. Cf. De Waard, Uitvinding (1906), 322; 327; 328; 330-331.
63
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 55.
64
Cornelis Drebbel (Alkmaar, 1572-1633) was a natural philosopher and technician, who invented
several devices, including a proto-type submarine. Drebbel is often viewed as the inventor of the
compound microscope (c. 1620), which according to others had been developed from the telescope
by Galilei in the 1610s. Cf. Van Helden, ‘The Birth of the Modern Scientific Instrument’ (1983) 71.
See also: Turner, ‘Animadversions’ (1985).
24 huib j. zuidervaart
Ill. 5. Jansen and Lipperhey, as depicted in Borel’s De Vero Telescopii Inventore (1656).
Ducartes,’ Cornelis Drebbel and the former medal maker Johannes Looff65 were
not alive anymore, for they would surely have confirmed his testimony.66
In March 1655, these testimonies were sent to ambassador Willem Boreel
in Paris. What then happened next is remarkable. In July 1655, in a letter to
Borel, Boreel rephrased his earlier statement about the invention of the tele-
scope. He now followed the testimony of Sachariassen almost to the letter,
and added some other particulars. Briefly, Boreel’s statement was as follows:
in 1591 (the year he was born), near his birthplace in Middelburg, a spectacle
maker lived in a house built against the New Church. His name was Hans
and he had a wife called Maria. They had three children: two daughters and
a son. As a child, Boreel had often played with this boy, called Zacharias. In
those days he also frequented their workshop. At one of those occasions he had
heard that Hans and Zacharias had first invented the microscope, and after
that, the telescope. This lucky event had to be dated around 1610. In 1619,
when Boreel visited London, he had seen a microscope at Cornelis Drebbel’s
house, which according to his memory was made by the two Jansens. As far as
65
Johannes Looff (d. 1651) was a silversmith, working in Middelburg at least from 1629. In 1634
he became the official die cutter of the Middelburg Mint, which was located near Jansen’s house. Cf.
De Man, ‘Johannes Looff’ (1925) 8-9.
66
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 55.
67
In his De Vero Telescopii Inventore, Borel honoured both ‘inventors’ with a portrait engraving.
Both portraits were made by the painter Hendrick Berckman[s] (1629-1679), living in Middelburg
since 1654. They were engraved by Jacob van Meurs, an engraver (and later publisher) active in
Leiden and Amsterdam from 1651 until 1680. Whether these portraits were made after older origi-
nals, we probably will never know.
68
See however the Frisian writer Wiaerda, Naauwkeurige verhandelinge van de eerste uytvindingen
en uytvinders (1733), who favours Metius, in spite of reading Borel’s De Vero Telescopii Inventore
(1656).
69
This section is a shortened English adaptation of my paper: ‘Uit vaderlandsliefde’ (2007). It is
based on documents which have survived the Second World War. See: Zeeuwse Bibliotheek, ma-
nuscripts of the Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen, nos. 211, 249, 257, 1110, 2862, 2863,
3675, 3676, 3688, 3953 en 3977. Courtesy Mrs. Katie Heyning, Middelburg, who brought these
documents to my attention.
70
This was not true. Ironically in 1906 it was found that Jansen actually was born in The Hague
(Holland). Cf. De Waard, Uitvinding (1906), 323.
26 huib j. zuidervaart
Ill. 6. Concept for a memorial for Jansen (1816). [Zelandia Illustrata, Zeeuws Archief,
Middelburg].
of the Netherlands’ had just been newly formed, and after the Napoleontic era,
during which the country had been annexed by France, national heroes were
badly needed as icons, to help in the creation of a national feeling (a so-called
‘Vaderlandsch Gevoel’) for the new centralized state. This cultural nationalism
used real and alleged heroes to establish the desired national identity.71
Nicolaas Cornelis Lambrechtsen van Ritthem, the president of the Zeeuwsch
Genootschap, immediately lent his support to this idea for a memorial for this
famous Zeelander, who with the invention of the telescope and the microscope
had changed the world. However, Lambrechtsen, a gentleman-historian, not
only arranged for a design for this memorial (ill. 6), but he also formed a com-
mittee with the task of searching the archives, in order to build a stronger case.
In June 1816 he approached several persons with the request to check the old
records in their possession for any particulars concerning Jansen and the in-
vention of both the microscope and the telescope. Among them were Cornelis
Johannes Serlé, director of the Middelburg mortgage registry office; Meinard
van Visvliet, secretary of the city council of Middelburg, Paulus Benoit, sexton
of the Middelburg churches; Cornelis de Fouw, archivist in The Hague; and
finally the (unnamed) librarian of Leiden University.
The harvest of these archival investigations was full of surprises. The most
unexpected was that almost nothing could be found on Jansen, whereas all
Cf. Van Sas, ‘Vaderlandsliefde, nationalisme en Vaderlands Gevoel in Nederland’ (1989); Bank,
71
Roemrijk Vaderland. See also: Van Berkel, ‘Natuurwetenschap en cultureel nationalisme’ (1991).
sorts of new details had emerged concerning Hans Lipperhey. Also, only the
1608-patent applications by Lipperhey and Metius were found, a very incon-
venient result for the Zeelanders, as everyone knew that Lipperhey was born
in Wesel, at that time considered to be a German city. The facts about Metius
of Alkmaar were equally displeasing because Middelburg, the capital of the
province of Zeeland, could not be the location of a statue erected for ‘foreign-
ers,’ born in Wesel or Alkmaar.
Even worse were the findings of Serlé. He discovered that Zacharias Jansen
was born in 1585, a fact which made it virtually impossible that Jansen could
have made a major invention at the age of five! Besides, whereas Lipperhey
was mentioned as a spectacle maker in various documents beginning in 1602,
Jansen was mentioned only in 1615 as the guardian of the two children of the
Middelburg spectacle maker ‘Lowys Lowyssen, geseyt Henricxen brilmakers.’
The only comforting discovery was the fact that Jansen and Lipperhey had
been close neighbours (ill. 7).
28 huib j. zuidervaart
In August 1818 Lambrechtsen presented his conclusions to the Zeeuwsch
Genootschap. The most painful result was the fact that no document could
be found in which Jansen, or his father, was mentioned as a spectacle maker.
These disappointing archival results had kept Lambrechtsen busy for a quite
some time, but in the end he had concluded that ambassador Willem Boreel’s
authority had to be regarded as decisive. His high aristocratic background was
a guarantee for his trustworthiness.72 So Boreel’s judgment that Jansen was
the first inventor had to be accepted, in spite of Jansen’s securely documented
birth date, 1585. Jansen had probably found the two-lens-arrangement, when
as a youngster he played in his father’s workshop. First he must have invented
the microscope – as De Kanter had assured Lambrechtsen – and after that
the telescopic arrangement had followed easily. Moreover, Lambrechtsen rea-
soned, this hypothesis was in harmony with the tradition mentioned by several
popular authors, that the invention had been done by children, during their
play with some convex and concave spectacle glasses.73
Regarding the question as to when prince Maurits had learned about these
inventions, Lambrechtsen guessed that these instruments had been presented
to him in May 1605, when the prince had visited Middelburg. The telescope’s
strategic importance must have been the reason why the instrument had been
kept a secret. Nevertheless, at some moment, Lipperhey must have heard about
Jansen’s invention, which stimulated him to produce his own version. It must
have been this instrument that in 1608 had been presented in The Hague. It
was clear, Lambrechtsen continued, that the invention had been a lucky coin-
cidence. It was amazing that it was achieved by two simple spectacle makers,
without any theoretical physical or mathematical knowledge. Nevertheless,
such an important invention should be commemorated, and therefore the
board of the Zeeuwsch Genootschap should now decide which steps were to be
taken to honour the remarkable Zacharias Jansen.
However, after the disappointing archival search, the plans for the erec-
tion of a memorial for Jansen were tabled. In 1819 De Kanter tried again to
revive the initiative by writing a memoir, in which he summarized the known
72
On the importance of social status on the reliability of witnesses, see for instance: Shapin, A Social
History of Truth (1994).
73
See for instance: ‘Bericht van een Engelschen Schryver rakende verscheide nuttige Uitvindingen
in de Neederlanden,’ in: Hollandsche Historische Courant, no. 97 (14 August 1749). Cf. Time’s
Telescope (1818), 169-170: ‘The discovery is traced to an incident of the simplest kind. The children
of a Dutch spectacle maker, being at play with some spectacle glasses, made use of two of them to-
gether, the one convex and the other concave, and looking at the weathercock of a church, observed
that it appeared much nearer and larger than usual.’
74
De Kanter, ‘Over de uitvinding der verrekijkers’ (1824).
75
Moll [& Van Swinden], ‘Geschiedkundig onderzoek’ (1831): offprint, page 2.
76
Moll, ‘On the first Invention of Telescopes’ (1831).
77
Moll [& Van Swinden], ‘Geschiedkundig onderzoek’ (1831), offprint, page 69-71. In both the
Dutch and the English version, Moll used the wrong spelling ‘Lippershey’ – with a ‘s’ – thus introducing
the erroneous form under which his name has been spelled in English literature.
30 huib j. zuidervaart
had been dug up in the Middelburg archives had been deliberately concealed
from the two researchers. As Moll reported the following:
Mr Van Swinden has called for in investigation into the city archive of Middelburg,
in order to verify whether there could be found anything more about Lipper(s)hey
or Jansen. However, although a very diligent search was made for such documents,
nothing was found. Also the original testimonies [from 1655], given by Boreel to
Borel, were not preserved among the papers of the city. […] Also the houses, where
Lipperhey and Jansen used to live, have since been taken down, [and an open space
now occupies the place where the telescope was invented].78
But Van Swinden had been wrongly informed. The original testimonies
of 1655 had probably been discovered in the city archives of Middelburg as a
direct result of Van Swinden’s request. It was most likely De Kanter himself,
who at that time was writing his own nationalistic history of the Province
of Zeeland, who withheld these documents. De Kanter published them in
1835, in an explicitly pro-Jansen pamphlet, not long after the publication of
the Van Swinden-Moll pro-Lipperhey version of the events. De Kanter even
reproduced a facsimile of Sachariassen’s testimony, in which he declared that
his father, Zacharias Jansen, had invented the telescope in 1590.79 Remarkably,
De Kanter did not make any reference to Moll’s publication in the official pro-
ceedings of the Royal Institute (Koninklijk Instituut), a periodical De Kanter
surely was familiar with.80
Van Swinden had also been wrongly informed about the demolition of the
houses of both ‘inventors.’ In the 1830s all houses concerned were still extant:
the one once occupied by Jansen, and the two other houses which once had
belonged to Lipperhey. The exact locations of these houses had been estab-
lished in 1816 by Serlé. It was only during the refurbishment of the Nieuwe
Kerk (The New Church) in 1848-1851, that two of these houses, built against
the wall of the church, were taken down. One of them, called De Amandel
Bale, the house which Lipperhey occupied at the time of his 1608-patent-
application, was painted in watercolour in 1848, only shortly before it was
demolished (ill. 8-A). After the mid-1850s only the neighbouring house,
78
Moll [& Van Swinden], ‘Geschiedkundig onderzoek’ (1831): offprint, 70. In the citation the addi-
tion between brackets comes from the English version.
79
De Kanter & Ab Utrecht Dresselhuis, Oorspronkelijke stukken (1835). In 1854, De Kanters son-
in-law and co-author Johannes Ab Utrecht Dresselhuis (1789-1861) later summarized De Kanters
pro-Jansen arguments in the periodical De Navorscher 4 (1854), 90-92.
80
Conversely, Moll did not mention De Kanter’s 1824-publication, as Elsevier observed in De
Navorscher 4 (1854) 92.
81
Cf. Kroniek van het Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, 2e serie, 7 (1851), 194-198; De Navorscher
1 (Bijblad 1853) 12, 450.
82
Harting, ‘De twee gewigtigste Nederlandsche uitvindingen’ (1859).
83
Harting and Matthes, ‘Verslag over den vermoedelijken uitvinder van het microskoop’ (1853).
Harting was in fact the author of this article, see page 118.
32 huib j. zuidervaart
Ill. 8. Façade of the Nieuwe Kerk at the
Kapoenstraat in Middelburg. Upper left:
Situation in 1848, the year in which
these houses were demolished. The house
at the right, was called De Amandel Bale.
It was here that in September 1608 Hans
Lipperhey made his first telescope. In the
next year he bought the neighbouring house
(not drawn) which he called the De Drie
Vare Gesichten, after the three telescopes
he made for the States General. Right:
Situation in 1851, representing the refur-
bished Neo-Gothic façade of the church.
The house De Drie Vare Gesichten is depict-
ed at the far right. Bottom: The ruins of De
Drie Vare Gesichten, after the bombardment
of Middelburg in May 1940. The façade of
the church had been re-reconstructed ear-
lier in the 20th century. [Zelandia Illustrata,
Zeeuws Archief, Middelburg].
and ill. 10-B).84 As a result, in 1869, in the printed catalogue of the collections
of the Zeeuwsch Genootschap, the Snijder-tubes were presented as almost cer-
tainly made by Zacharias Jansen.85 And as Harting had ‘identified’ the smallest
tube as a microscope, this tube was sent to the 1876-Exhibition of Scientific
instruments in South Kensington, to be placed in the gallery of ‘Historical
Treasures’ (ill. 11).86 Subsequently, copies of this alleged ‘Jansen-microscope’
were ordered by a number of museums all over the world (ill. 12).87 No won-
der that in 1890-1891 this ‘item of evidence’ of Jansen’s invention became the
centre piece of an exhibition held in Antwerp, commemorating the presumed
300-year anniversary of the invention of the microscope by ‘Hans et Zacharias
Janssen de Middelbourg, inventeurs du microscope composé.’88 And even to-
day, in 2009, images of this tube can be found on the internet claiming it to be
the oldest extant microscope, of which ‘most scholars agree that the invention
[…] can be credited to Zacharias Janssen in the late sixteenth century.’89
84
Harting, ‘Oude optische werktuigen’ (1867).
85
Nagtglas, Catalogus van Oud- en Zeldzaamheden (1869), no. 46.
86
De Clercq, ‘The Special Loan Collection’ (2002) 11-19; Part 4: Photographs and copies, in: ibi-
dem, no. 76 (March 2003) 10-15.
87
De Clercq, ‘The Special Loan Collection’ (2002), 13-15. See in more detail about the tubes:
Harting, ‘Oude optische werktuigen’ (1867) and Zuidervaart, ‘Uit Vaderlandsliefde’ (2007).
88
On this commemoration, organised by Henri van Heurck, see Becker, ‘Eene Neder-landsche
uitvinding waardig herdacht’ (1892); Rapport du jury de l’exposition de microscopie générale & retros-
pective (1891); Miquel, Exposition générale et rétrospective de microscopie de la ville d’Anvers (1892).
89
Cf. http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/museum/janssen.html (consulted on January 2009).
34 huib j. zuidervaart
Ill. 10. Zacharias Snijder’s tubes, alleged to be from the Jansen workshop. The short
tube was [wrongly] ‘identified’ in 1867 by Harting as a ‘microscope’. The two long
tubes were destroyed in 1940. Steel engravings taken from Harting (1859).
Nagtglas, who had found in the Middelburg archives the earliest known entry
of Lipperhey as a spectacle maker (in 1602), pleaded for a more well-balanced
approach. As secretary of the ‘Commission for the tracing and conservation of
notable antiquities of Zeeland’ he proposed the installation of a second free-
stone plaque, this time in the wall of the remaining house once occupied by
Lipperhey. And indeed in 1875 this was done.91
90
Nagtglas, Levensberichten, 1 (1888), 475.
91
Zuidervaart, ‘Uit Vaderlandsliefde’ (2007), 32.
Ill. 12. Left: The Jansen ‘microscope’ (or Snijder’s short tube), in its present state
of preservation (Collection Koninklijk Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen,
Zeeuws Museum, Middelburg). Right: Copy made in the 1890s by John Mayall.
(National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington, D.C., USA). Other copies
are in the British Museum, London and the Deutsches Museum, Munich.
36 huib j. zuidervaart
Zacharias Jansse, the new celebrity in the history of civilisation, is – except in the
testimony of his own son, and in the protection of his ostensible playmate [Boreel] –
an unknown bigwig. It’s just that he is mentioned in the book of Borellus, which is
written in the [Latin] language of the learned, and thus was spread everywhere. That
is why his name was adopted by later writers, and protected by those who should have
known better.92
According to Frederiks one of the worst things was that the ugly ‘Escausian
Stone, which was so hurriedly attached to the church wall, was seen as a testi-
mony in its own right of this reprehensible kind of historical belief.’ But luck-
ily the inscription was of a ‘praiseworthy shortness.’93
1906: Cornelis de Waard and his monumental study ‘De Uitvinding der verrekijkers’
In spite of Frederiks’ severe criticism, an opinion which had been strongly
supported in a Dutch national newspaper by the Groningen teacher of as-
tronomy Willem Gleuns94, the Jansen-priority was still vigorously defended,
first in 1890 in a small pamphlet by Herman Japikse, physicist and director
of a Middelburg secondary school95, and almost two decades later, with much
more vigour and arguments by the mathematician and historian Cornelis de
Waard (1879-1963), in his very well documented study De uitvinding der ver-
rekijkers.96
In this study De Waard left no stone unturned. Not only had he read all the
relevant contemporary literature on the subject, but, being the son of an archi-
vist, he was also a very skilled archival researcher and had searched vigilantly in
all the Zeeland archives. De Waard combined a series of findings:
(1) First, De Waard had found in the registers of the daily administration
of the States of Zeeland a note stating that ‘a young man’ (of whom the name
was left blank) ‘also says he knows the art of making instruments for seeing
far.’ Thus there was indeed irrefutable contemporary evidence that another
person had lived in Middelburg in 1608 with the knowledge how to con-
struct a (crude) telescope. De Waard was convinced that this person had been
Zacharias Jansen.
92
Frederiks, ‘Johan Lipperhey van Wesel’ (1885).
93
Ibidem.
94
W. Gleuns, Algemeen Handelsblad (25 December 1889). Critical newspaper article, comment-
ing on the Antwerp exhibition commemorating the 300-year anniversary of the invention of the
microscope.
95
Japikse, Het aandeel van Zacharias Janse (1890).
96
De Waard, Uitvinding (1906).
‘Johannes Sacharias says that his father made the first telescope in this country in the
year 1604, after an example of an Italian, on which was written: ano 1[5]90.’97
Taken together, these ‘facts’ convinced De Waard not only of Jansen’s genu-
ine existence as a historical figure, but also made him very eager to support
Borel’s claim, which made Jansen the first Dutch telescope maker. And so,
De Waard concluded, it must have been Jansen, who in 1604 made the first
Dutch telescope, probably after an earlier model, made by one of the many
Italians, which at the time were working in the Netherlands. This could have
been one of the employees of the glassworks of Govaert van der Haghe, who
in 1581 had founded in Middelburg the only glass factory in the Northern
Netherlands where glass was made according to the high quality Venetian reci-
pes. But what about Lipperhey? For De Waard, too, he remained the second
inventor, and even the first constructor of a binocular telescope.
De Waard, Uitvinding (1906), 154-155 (with a facsimile); Cf. Van Helden, Invention (1977), 53.
97
38 huib j. zuidervaart
Although De Waard had made exhaustive researches, in later years Dutch
archives continued to reveal more particulars about Zacharias Jansen. In
1909, and also in 1933-1934, the Amsterdam historians Johannes Breen and
Hendrik Fredrik Wijnman brought to light that Zacharias Jansen had moved
to Amsterdam in November 1626, working there for some time as a spectacle
maker. However, in that profession Jansen had not been successful, because he
was declared bankrupt in May 1628.98
‘When all is said and done, we are still left with the fact that the earliest undeniable
mention of a telescope is to be found in the letter of 25 September 1608, which
Lipperhey carried to The Hague and that Lipperhey was the first to request a patent
on the telescope. But to award the honour of the invention to Lipperhey solely on that
basis is an exercise in historical positivism.’99
A fresh look at the events of 1608 was presented in 2007 by Rolf Willach,
a Swiss optical engineer. He presented a elegant answer to the remaining and
98
Breen, ‘Topographische geschiedenis’ (1909) 183 & 188; Wijnman, ‘Sacharias Jansen te
Amsterdam’ (1933) and idem, ‘Nogmaals Sacharias Jansen’ (1934). In the latter paper Wijnman
distinguished two persons with the name Sacharias Jansen, both living in Amsterdam in the same
period: the spectacle maker from Middelburg and a brass founder from Schobel. The latter is er-
roneously identified as the spectacle maker by Van Kerkwijk, ‘Neurenberger rekenpenning in 1628
te Amsterdam door Zacharias Jansz vervaardigd’ (1926).
99
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 25.
There is no doubt that Lipperhey was the first who had this knowledge. He could
repeat the construction of the telescope as often as needed, including binoculars, the
most difficult construction. His idea was as simple as ingenious, but this simplicity
should not diminish its merits. We can see how his success was based on numerous
small steps made over many centuries. He just happened to be the last link in a long
chain.101
100
Willach, ‘Der lange Weg (2007). Idem, The Long Route (2008).
101
Willach, The Long Route (2008), 99.
102
Théodore Deschamps to Marin Mersenne, 5 May 1642: ‘Or j’estoy à Leyden en l’an 1609, où
Rodolphus Snellius, professeur en mathematiques, qui nous lisoit l’Optique de Ramus, à la sortie
de sa leçon, me monstra les lunettes communes qui n’avoyent qu’un tuyeau’ […] ‘[Je] recogneus
que ce lunetier de Delft n’avoit fait autre chose que mettre les verres en deüe distance, et couvrir les
parties du verre convexe sur lesquelles les rayons venants de l’object s’entrecouppent trop près les
uns les autres.’ Cf. De Waard, Journal 1 (1939), 12, 209; idem, Correspondance Mersenne 11 (1970),
140-141.
40 huib j. zuidervaart
in the French city of Caen, he remembered a Middelburg spectacle maker who
constructed telescopes without a diaphragm.103 So probably the last word on
this subject has not yet been written.
IV. Epilogue
High social status and its importance for the credibility of a testimony
This survey of 400 years of the – mostly Dutch – debate about the invention of
the telescope reveals that historiography is indeed a dynamic process, in which
the motives of actors fluctuate according to their own background, coloured
by national interests, and in which witnesses and their testimonies are valued
according to the standards of time and place.
Thus in the early nineteenth-century Van Swinden and Moll came to an in-
terpretation of the facts different from Lambrechtsen and De Kanter’s. While
the former undertook a critical evaluation of all contemporary documents,
leading to one of the earliest attempts in Dutch history to write an archive-
based ‘history of science,’ the latter were clearly obsessed by the wish to high-
light the importance of the local history and culture of Zeeland.
The question ‘whom to believe in respect to the invention of the telescope,’
appears to be one of the leading themes in this historiography. In many ways
it resembles the history of the first observations made with this very instru-
ment. When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter with his telescope in the
winter of 1610, almost nobody believed him at first. Little wonder, for no one
had telescopes good enough to show them– And even when observers had
access to Galileo’s own telescope very few could see Jupiter’s satellites because
the instrument was so difficult to use and its field of view was so small. (about
15 arc-minutes). Later, in Tuscany, he was more fortunate. Guided by Galilei,
Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici was able to observe these heavenly bodies.
This grand-ducal testimony was crucial for Galilei to achieve the credibility he
needed for his discoveries to be accepted as real and trustworthy.104
Similar examples can be given at various occasions through the seventeenth
century. Even in natural philosophy the high social status of a witness provided
the credibility, which an instrumental observation or experiment could not
103
Entry by Beeckman in his notebook on 13 August 1618, commenting on Sirtori’s Telescopium. In
May 1628, also in his notebook, Beeckman discusses the function of the diaphragm in a telescope.
Cf. De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 1 (1939), 208-209 & 3 (1945), 46.
104
Van Helden, ‘Telescopes and Authority from Galileo to Cassini’ (1994), 11.
‘When one realizes that WILLEM BOREEL, one of our most honourable states-
men in the early seventeenth century, to whom, during this important period of our
[Dutch] history, was entrusted the position of ambassador, first to England and later
to France, then surely one must acknowledge that the testimony of such a man de-
serves a very high degree of credibility.’107
105
Cf. Dear, ‘‘Totius in Verba’’ (1985) and Shapin, A Social History of Truth (1994).
106
Cf. Gerrits, Grote Nederlanders (1948), 45.
107
Cf. Harting and Matthes, ‘Verslag over den vermoedelijken uitvinder van het microskoop’ (1853),
70.
42 huib j. zuidervaart
Jansen Exit
Today we must conclude, on the basis of all the evidence gathered in the past
four centuries, that the story of Zacharias Jansen as the inventor of the tele-
scope appears to be a mere historical fabrication, made up by his only son at a
time when ‘fame and possibly gain was to be derived from it,’ as Van Helden
has put it.108 In the nineteenth century, Johannes Sachariassen was exposed
as a fraudulent witness, lying not only about his age, but about almost every
other item in his testimony.109 His remark, recorded in 1634 by Beeckman,
that his father had made a telescope in 1604, should have had no more im-
pact than any other remark by a boaster, singing the praise of his own fam-
ily. And while Boreel’s first testimony about Lipperhey is confirmed by the
archival sources, his later testimony in which Zacharias Jansen was launched
as the inventor, also contradicts some of the available evidence, with the result
that Jansen is also discredited as the inventor of the compound microscope.110
What is more, historical research has shown that the compound microscope
only emerged on the scene in about 1620, and therefore Boreel’s testimony,
too, can be completely disregarded.111 Still even in the 21st century advocates
can be found, who are willing to stand up for Jansen’s priority as the inventor
108
Van Helden, ‘The Historical Problem’ (1975), 256.
109
To summarize the contradictions in Sachariassen’s statement of 1655: (1) ‘In 1590 my father
invented the telescope’ [Zacharias Jansen was born in 1585, so he would have been five years old at
the time of the invention]; (2) At that time examples were given to Count Maurits and Archduke
Albertus. [No archival record whatsoever; it is only recorded that Jansen was active as a spectacle maker
since 1616]; (3) In 1618 my father and I invented the ‘long tubes (the astronomical telescope) [design
was published by Kepler in 1611]; (4) In 1620 Metius and Drebbel bought one of our instruments in
order to copy these. [Metius used a telescope at least from 1613 onwards; Drebbel already wrote on the
telescope in 1609]; (5) ‘I am 52 years old [Actually Sachariassen was 43 in 1655. He probably lied about
his own age, in order to validate his own claim for a share in the invention of astronomical telescope].
110
Boreel’s first testimonial gives an accurate description of Lipperhey and the location of his work-
shop. To summarize the contradictions in Boreel’s second testimonial of 1655: (1) ‘Near the house
where I was born, … a certain spectacle-maker lived in the year 1591 by the name of Hans’ [Hans
Martens died in 1592, when Boreel was only one year old. He could not have remembered him. In no
document is Hans mentioned as a spectacle maker]; (2) ‘Hans had a wife Maria and two daughters’ [The
wife was called Maeyken and there was only one daughter]; (3) ‘I knew Zacharias intimately, because
… we played together from an early age’ [Boreel was born in 1591 and Zacharias in 1585: the differ-
ence in years, as well as the extreme difference in social status makes this clam highly unlikely]; (4) ‘Hans,
or Johannes, with his son Sacharias, as I have often heard, first invented the microscope’ [This instru-
ment emerged only in about 1620; Boreel’s statement that in 1619, in England, he saw a ‘microscope
of that Sacharias’ at Drebbel’s house, is probably confused with the instrument Drebbel personally had
made]; (5) ‘Lipperhey copied the instrument, after an unknown visitor ordered glasses from Jansen’
[This account follows closely the story published by Sirtori in 1618, which Boreel had read].
111
Turner, ‘Animadversions’ (1985).
Barlow Pepin, The Emergence of the Telescope (2004). See also De Rijk, ‘Een standbeeld voor
112
Zacharias Janssen’ (1975); idem, ‘Wie heeft de telescoop uitgevonden?’ (1985) and idem, ‘Op zoek
naar de uitvinder van de Hollandse kijker’ (2008).
44 huib j. zuidervaart
The city of Middelburg,
cradle of the telescope
Klaas van Berkel
Introduction
The telescope was invented in the city of Middelburg, capital of the Dutch
province of Zeeland.1 It is here that the lens grinder and spectacle maker Hans
Lipperhey constructed his telescopes and it is from here that in September
1608 the same Lipperhey travelled to The Hague, the seat of the States General
of the Dutch Republic, to apply for a patent for this instrument ‘for seeing far.’
For those who are slightly familiar with the city as it is today, Middelburg may
seem to be an unlikely place of origin of an instrument that played such an im-
portant and in some respects even decisive part in the development of modern
science. Middelburg nowadays appears above all quiet and friendly. Travellers
coming from a bustling industrial and commercial city like Rotterdam, more
than an hour away by car or by train, get the impression of entering a world
almost forgotten. The old abbey buildings with their cloister and the slender
steeple of the abbey church, the former city hall in late Gothic style and the
weather-beaten warehouses along the quiet quays give the city the appearance
of a provincial backwater.
We should be careful however and not project back unto the early seven-
teenth century a picture that even today may not be true after all. Around
1600, the young Dutch Republic was in technological and economic terms
quickly becoming the most advanced nation in Europe and Middelburg oc-
cupied a central position in its commercial network. Furthermore, the city was
the site of some interesting developments in the arts and the sciences. Culture,
1
I am aware that it is misleading to talk about ‘the’ invention of the telescope as if it were a one time
event with a single inventor. Instead, it was a piecemeal development of which the telescope was
only the end product. See Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope (1977); Willach, The Long Route
to the Invention of the Telescope (2008). For convenience sake, however, I will continue to refer to
‘the invention of the telescope’ and I think this is also justified because recent research, particularly
by Willach, has suggested that application of the diaphragm, probably by Lipperhey, was the real
breakthrough that turned an inconspicuous optical gadget into a powerful military and soon also
into a path-breaking scientific instrument.
Booming Middelburg
Middelburg is located on the island of Walcheren, one of the major islands in
the estuary of rivers like the Scheldt and the Rhine, situated between Holland
in the north and Flanders in the south. The city had no direct access to the
sea, unlike neighbouring cities like Vlissingen and Veere, but it was connected
to open water by the river Arne which flowed into the sea at the small town
of Arnemuiden. Only in 1532 a more direct connection with open water was
established by digging a new canal (ill. 1). Notwithstanding this disadvantage,
Middelburg had become the capital city of the island, outdoing its rivals and
acquiring the leading position in the province as a whole. In the fifteenth cen-
tury, the city flourished economically, partly because of its location between
northern and southern Europe and partly because of the vicinity of a major
trading centre like Antwerp. However, contrary to what is sometimes assumed,
Middelburg was not simply an advance port of Antwerp. It is true that some
of the ships with cargo destined for Antwerp did unload at Middelburg and
had their goods transported to Antwerp in smaller vessels. Yet 50 % of the in-
ternational trade of Middelburg consisted of the trade in French wine, mainly
imported from Rouen, the capital of Normandy. In 1523 the Middelburg
merchants had been awarded an imperial monopoly for the trade in French
wine in the Habsburg Netherlands and this, together with the trade in raw salt
from the French west coast, remained one of the mainstays of the Middelburg
economy well into the seventeenth century.2
In the early years of the Dutch Revolt, Middelburg suffered greatly. In
the spring of 1572, Vlissingen and Veere took the side of the insurgents led
by William of Orange, whereas Middelburg, seat of the royal administration
2
For a recent re-evaluation of the economic history of Middelburg, see: Enthoven, Zeeland en de
opkomst van de Republiek (1996). The history by Unger, De geschiedenis van Middelburg in omtrek
(1954) is out-dated, but a more up to date general history of the city is not yet available.
and defended by a strong garrison, remained loyal to the Spanish king. The
city therefore had to endure a siege by the forces of the rebels which lasted for
almost two years. After a Spanish fleet destined to relieve Middelburg was de-
feated in January 1574, both the Spanish commander and the city government
decided that further resistance was useless. The city was treated respectfully –
no plundering took place – but it had to pay the substantial fine of 100.000
guilders. Furthermore trade had been interrupted for several years, during
which merchants had found other places to go to, and many of the privileges
Middelburg once had were abolished. Middelburg lost part of its jurisdic-
tion over the surrounding countryside to the competing towns of Veere and
Vlissingen and the proud city had to acquiesce in the fact that Arnemuiden,
formerly not much more than an out port of Middelburg, acquired city rights
of its own. From then on even Arnemuiden was beyond its control.3
Undeterred by these setbacks, the city of Middelburg immediately tried to
regain at least some of its former prosperity and political prominence and in
this effort the city succeeded remarkably well. In 1576 the city was again recog-
nized as the capital city of the province, which ensured that many corporations
and legislative bodies would again reside in the city. Also the trade in French
wine revived, Spanish and Venetian merchants who had left the city during the
siege returned, and in 1582 the English Merchant Adventurers Company, who
had a monopoly in the trade of English woollen cloth, moved their staple to
Middelburg. In the late 1590s, Middelburg also became one of the first cities
in the Netherlands to fit out a fleet to the East Indies. On the successful return
The political history of Middelburg is closely connected to the political history of the province of
3
4
Davids, ‘Shifts of technological leadership in early modern Europe’ (1995), 338-366; Davids,
The Rise and Decline of Dutch Technological Leadership (2008); Israel, Dutch primacy in world trade
(1989).
5
For information concerning glass production see: Hudig, Das Glas (1923); Klein, ‘Nederlandse
glasmakerijen in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw’; Charleston & Angus-Butteerworth, ‘Glass’
(1957); Henkes & Zijlstra-Zweens, ‘Met wit email versierde beker- en kelkglazen uit ca. 1600
(1992); Henkes, ‘The influence of Antwerp on the development of glass production in the 16th and
17th centuries in the Northern Netherlands.’ (I thank Daniëlle Caluwé for providing me with the
last two references).
6
The relevant documents from the Middelburg archives (destroyed during World War II), were
published by De Waard, De uitvinding der verrekijkers (1906), 307-319.
7
Van Dillen, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis van het bedrijfsleven en het gildewezen van Amsterdam, 1
(1929), 548-549.
few years, but his business was continued by Jan Janz. Carel, to whom the city
council of Amsterdam in 1601 leased out a large piece of land at the southern
side of the city. Financially Carel was backed up by a company of Amsterdam
merchants who also tried to lure some of Miotto’s men to Amsterdam (the
Middelburg magistrate protested repeatedly against this kind of piracy, but
apparently without success).8 A third factory was established in Rotterdam in
1614. However, losing the monopoly does not seem to have harmed Miotto at
all. In 1618 he had some very elegant houses build in Middelburg and his fac-
tory was doing so well that in 1621 a merchant from London even tried to lure
him to the English capital, unsuccessfully for that matter. In that very same
year he supplied six very elegant and expensive communion beakers for the
Old Church in Middelburg (all of them now lost). Middelburg around 1600
was the leading city in the Dutch Republic for the production of high quality
glass and since the manufacture of a telescope requires the availability of lenses
of such quality it is quite natural for the telescope to have been invented in
Middelburg.
Glass production was drawn to Middelburg already in 1581, but after
the fall of Antwerp in 1585 many more merchants and industrialists moved
their business to Middelburg. Antwerp had been one of the strongholds of
Calvinism in the southern provinces, but when the Spanish general Alessandro
8
Ibidem, 592-596. Previously, Amsterdam merchants had invested their money in the glass factory
of Van der Haghe in Middelburg! Cf. Klein, ‘Nederlandse glasmakerijen’ (1982), 37.
Farnese, Duke of Parma, captured the city in 1585, he ordered all Protestants
either to leave the city (which they could do while taking along all their pos-
sessions) or to convert back to Catholicism. Many decided to do the former
and so in the second half of 1585 a large stream of people left the city on the
Scheldt to start a new life elsewhere – or perhaps just to sit out the storm at
some sheltered place not too far away from Antwerp. Middelburg, with its
longstanding ties to Antwerp, offered a convenient place to stay and so of all
the Dutch cities Middelburg profited the most from the exodus of poor and
rich people from Antwerp. In 1585, Middelburg even sent a small fleet to the
old metropolis on the Scheldt in order to pick up those who wished to leave.
Between 1580 and 1595, Middelburg registered about 2,500 new burghers,
compared to only 1,600 in Amsterdam and about 1,000 in Leiden. Not all of
these new full citizens of Middelburg came from the southern provinces. Hans
Lipperhey, for example, originated from the German city of Wesel, not far
from the Dutch border. Still, a large majority of the immigrants was born in
the south and came to Middelburg either directly or through some intermedi-
ary station like London or Emden. No fewer than 75 % of the new citizens
of Middelburg came from the southern provinces. As a result of this influx of
9
Traditionally higher figures are given, mostly some 30,000 for the beginning of the seventeenth
century. The more reasonable number of 18,000 is provided by Priester, Geschiedenis van de Zeeuwse
landbouw circa 1600-1910 (1998), 52-58, 481. The population of Antwerp dropped to some 45,000
after Parma had taken the city in 1585, but in the course of the seventeenth century it grew quite
considerably again. Antwerp thus always remained much larger than Middelburg.
When he declared the embargo in 1598, the license fees in Zeeland dropped
almost to zero, thereby causing serious problems for the Zeeland administra-
tion. Yet it proved very hard to enforce the embargo completely and so after a
couple of years the income from license fees was back at its ‘normal’ figure.
Still, more trouble was on its way. After the fall of Antwerp in 1585, the
rebellious provinces went through a severe crisis. Foreign aid against the ad-
vancing Spanish forces was hard to find and internally political leadership was
a bone of contention. After the murder of William the Silent in 1584 it took
some years before it became clear that his son Maurits, in collaboration with
the pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, would lead the country in the fight
against the Spanish. In this they succeeded remarkably well. By 1600 almost all
of the territories to the north of the great rivers had been cleared from Spanish
forces; after ten years of hard fighting the so-called ‘fence’ of the Republic was
closed. Holland was safe behind the rivers and a string of fortresses defending
the neighbouring provinces. Thanks to this military success and the energetic
10
On the relative importance of the influx from the south for the Dutch and more specifically
Amsterdam economy, see Gelderblom, Zuid-Nederlandse kooplieden en de opkomst van de Amsterdamse
stapelmarkt (2000).
Rotterdam
Ill. 5. Dutch recovery of territory in the Netherlands (1590-1604). In less then twenty
years Prince Maurits managed to clear all of the northern Netherlands from Spanish
forces, but Middelburg was now situated at the periphery of the new state. Map re-
printed from: Israel, The Dutch Republic (1995).
For Lipperhey and his fellow townsmen, however, this was still hidden in
the future. For them, Middelburg was a busy and lively city with ample op-
portunities for local people and newcomers alike.
11
Zuidervaart, ‘Zeeuws preacademisch erfgoed. Een filosofische disputatie uit Middelburg uit de
late zestiende eeuw’ (2009).
12
Frijhoff, ‘Zeelands universiteit: hoe vaak het mislukte en waarom’ (1986).
13
For a survey of the contribution of Zeeland to the history of the early modern sciences: Meertens,
Letterkundig leven in Zeeland in de zestiende en de eerste helft der zeventiende eeuw (1943), 435-441.
14
As quoted in: Dijksterhuis, Simon Stevin (1943), 7note. Dijksterhuis was not able to confirm this
story and research is nowadays practically impossible since most of the Middelburg archives were
lost during the Second World War.
15
On Lansbergen, see Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans (2002), 73-99.
16
In the second edition of 1631 Lansbergen assured the city magistrates that he had first conceived
of the book in Middelburg, that afterwards was written in Goes (‘primum in urbe vestri concepi,
post Goesae scripsi’). Vermij. The Calvinist Copernicans, 75note.
17
On Beeckman, see Van Berkel, Mechanical Philosophy in the Making. Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637)
(in press).
regularly – if only to buy the excellent candles that Beeckman Sr., was produc-
ing. Scientific topics were discussed too and one can imagine that Lansbergen
early on noticed the peculiar interest of his fellow immigrant’s oldest son in
mechanical and physical matters. From Isaac Beeckman’s scientific notebooks,
the Journal, we can infer that around 1615 Lansbergen stimulated him in
studying medicine, helping him out with the books in his, that is Lansbergen’s
library, and suggesting him that he get a medical degree at the French univer-
sity of Caen in Normandy. To be sure, Beeckman was in no way a scholar who
was detached from everyday life; on the contrary, his Journal abounds with
examples of his involvement in technological ventures both in his home town
Middelburg and in the other cities where he was active for a number of years,
cities like Rotterdam and Dordrecht. However, whether Lansbergen and Isaac
Beeckman knew about Lipperhey’s telescope in 1608 or 1609 remains unclear.
In those years, Beeckman was away most of the time; he studied theology and
mathematics at Leiden University from 1607 to 1610. It was actually at Leiden
that Beeckman first saw a telescope, since his mathematical teacher Rudolph
Snellius used to demonstrate the new instrument to the students who took his
course on optics, Beeckman being among them. Lansbergen on the other hand
was still living at Goes when Lipperhey went to The Hague. When around
1620 he suggested that Beeckman build his own telescope, he referred, as
would be natural at that time, to Galileo’s invention, not to Lipperhey’s. Much
later Beeckman took lessons in lens grinding with Johannes Sachariassen, the
son of Sacharias Jansen, who for a long time was regarded as the real inven-
tor of the telescope. During one of their grinding sessions Sachariassen told
Beeckman that his father had been the first who invented the telescope, and
Beeckman did not contradict this statement – something he would certainly
have done had he known about Lipperhey.18
18
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 376.
Some lovers of plants were more than just avid collectors of rare specimens
of flowers and had their contacts in the world of botanical science. In the
1590s there flourished in Middelburg a small but active circle of plant collec-
tors who corresponded with the great botanist Carolus Clusius, who in 1593
came to Leiden to become supervisor of the botanical garden of the universi-
ty.20 Members of this circle were the city doctor Tobias Roels, the apothecary
Willem Jaspers Parduyn and the clergyman Johannes de Jonge. All of them
had gardens where they grew rare plants. Parduyn even had more than one gar-
den. He had one directly behind his apothecary on the Market (a house called
‘The Gilded Mortar’), and he had another probably outside the city walls.
19
Meertens, Letterkundig leven, 251; Bol, The Bosschaert dynasty (1960), 16. It is of course impos-
sible to establish who constructed the many fountains in the pleasure gardens of the Middelburg
elite, but it is tempting to think that the well-known inventor Cornelis Drebbel was one of them.
Although he lived in the city of Alkmaar, in the province of Holland, he is reported as having con-
structed a fountain outside the North-gate in Middelburg in 1601. Cf. G. Tierie, Cornelis Drebbel
(1572-1633) (Amsterdam, 1932), 4 (I thank Huib Zuidervaart for bringing this to my attention).
Abraham Beeckman of course is another candidate. From Isaac Beeckman’s Journal it is clear that
his father and Drebbel knew each other personally. Did they meet or perhaps even cooperate during
Drebbel’s visit to Middelburg in 1601?
20
Eldering, ‘Middelburgs biologisch onderzoek in de 17e eeuw’ (1986).
21
Hunger, ‘Acht brieven van Middelburgers aan Carolus Clusius’ (1925). Parduyn and De Jonge
wrote their letters in Dutch, as did Jehan Somer and Jacques Noirot, two other members of the
Middelburg community of plant lovers, while Roels corresponded in Latin. On Clusius, see: Hunger,
Charles de l’Ecluse (1927-1942) and Egmond et al., Carolus Clusius (2007).
22
Hunger, ‘Acht brieven’ (1925), 114.
23
Ibidem, 123: ‘Om te vraegen near wat vrempts.’
24
Willem Parduyn (1550-1602) was born in the city of Veere. See: Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch
Woordenboek (NNBW), III, col. 958.
25
The Middelburg plant collectors also served as an intermediary for Clusius and his Spanish corre-
spondents. On the close connection between science and commerce, see: Cook, Matters of Exchange
(2007).
Two years ago I intended sending Your Honour two Lilies of Constantinopel which
then blossomed in my garden, but D. Roelsius requested me to allow him to do this,
promising to share with me whatever you should send him, and to this I agreed.
Although Your Honour has rewarded him [with plants, seeds and bulbs], as I see, he
acts unfaithfully and dishonestly, for he keeps everything for himself.27
Some years later the famous botanist Matthias de l’Obel (Lobelius) ex-
pressed himself in even stronger terms. Lobelius (1538-1616) was a native
of the Flemish city of Lille, had been physician to William of Orange and in
1584 had become city physician of Middelburg. He thus was a direct colleague
of Roels. In 1596 he had left Middelburg and went to England to become the
personal physician of king James I, but every now and then he returned to the
Netherlands, also to Middelburg. In 1603, shortly after the death of Roels,
he commented on what he seen in Middelburg in a letter to Clusius: ‘I find
everything so changed and the city [Middelburg] fallen so low and depopu-
lated, the practise of medicine so corrupted by the errand boys of Roels and his
partners, that nothing can be done without protection.’28 He also found that
the pseudo-chemists and the ‘kaco-chemists’ were held in higher esteem than
the really competent physicians.
26
Roels’s father, who had come to Middelburg from Antwerp already in 1568 to become pensionary
to the bishop of Middelburg, stayed in Middelburg after the city was seized by the rebels in 1574
and became pensionary to the States of Zeeland. His son Willem Roels was pensionary of the city
of Middelburg from 1578 to his death in 1595 and married the sister-in-law of the second pension-
ary of the city of Middelburg, Johan van der Warke. Tobias Roels, the son of Willem, also married
someone from the Van der Warcke clan. He studied medicine at Leiden and graduated as a medical
doctor at some foreign university. On returning to Middelburg, he became one of its city doctors.
Though he was just the (grand-)son of an immigrant, he always moved in the highest circles in
Middelburg. See: NNBW, III, col. 1083; Meertens, Letterkundig leven (1943), 161, 471.
27
As quoted in: Bol, The Bosschaert dynasty (1960), 17.
28
As quoted in Eldering, ‘Middelburgs biologisch onderzoek’ (1986), 89. The fact that the young
city doctor Charles Pelletier, who in 1610 published the first flora of Walcheren, the Plantarum
tum patriarum, tum exoticarum, in Walachria, Zeelandiae insula, nascentium synonyma (Middelburg,
1610), does not seem to have had contact with the Roels circle may also have to do with the strained
relations within the circle of Middelburg amateur botanists.
29
Bol, The Bosschaert dynasty (1960), 18: Hunger, ‘Acht brieven’ (1925), 111, 127. For a refreshing
analysis of the growing interest in tulips, which in the end led to the so-called tulip craze (which also
affected Middelburg): Goldgar, Tulipmania (2007). Somer had travelled extensively in the Eastern
Mediterranean and had published a widely read travel report: Beschrijvinge van een Zee ende Landt
Reyse naer de Levante (2nd ed. Amsterdam, 1649). See: Goldgar, Tulipmania, 20-23.
30
This paragraph is mainly based on: Bol, The Bosschaert dynasty (1960). See also: Brenninckmeijer-
De Rooy, Bouquets from the Golden Age (1992); Bakker et al. (ed.), Masters of Middelburg (1984).
31
This was already suggested by Hunger, ‘Acht brieven’ (1925), 112 note.
32
Bakker et al. (ed.), Masters of Middelburg (1984), 32.
East Indies (wood with a grain showing capricious figures suggestive of written
characters) to Antwerp. In return, paintings by Jan Brueghel may have trav-
elled to Middelburg, which would explain why some elements in Bosschaert’s
paintings are strikingly similar to Brueghel’s pictures.35 Borrowing details from
the work of other artist was quite common in the seventeenth century and in
no way detracts from the originality or the quality of the artist’s work, as long
as these details were absorbed and integrated into his own way of handling the
material. And after all, most preliminary studies will have been Bosschaert’s
own work.
35
Ibidem, 24.
36
In the literature on Bosschaert and his dynasty, each and every detail of his paintings is carefully
analysed. Even the number of dew drops, the holes in the leaves and the place of the signature are
scrutinized. Yet the insects and the other little animals hardly get any attention; only the shells have
caught the eye of art historians.
37
Jorink, Het Boeck der Natuere (2006), 198-202. Although the theme of the book of nature is
prominent in literary texts in the early seventeenth century (Eric Jorink mentions for instance the
poetry of the pensionary of Zeeland, Jacob Cats), I doubt whether this was Bosschaert’s and Van der
Ast’s main motive for adding insects to their paintings. Bakker et al. (eds.), Masters of Middelburg
(1984), 37-38, stresses the (Christian) symbolism of the individual flowers, but this tendency to see
hidden meanings in seventeenth century Dutch painting is on its decline nowadays.
38
Westerman, A Worldly Art: the Dutch Republic (1996). The Dutch painter-writer Karel van
Mander in his Schilderboek (1604) says in so many words that painters added little animals in order
to strengthen the reality effect of their paintings. He refers to the flower pots and flower glasses of
the painter Lodewyck Jansz. van den Bosch and tells us that he ‘devoted much time, patience, and
accuracy to [his flowers] so that everything appeared natural, also because he painted dewdrops on
the flowers and herbs, as well as a few little creatures, for example butterflies, flies, and suchlike ….’
As quoted in: Bol, The Bosschaert dynasty (1960), 18. No paintings of Van de Bosch are extant today,
but Van Mander explicitly mentions that a few fruit pieces and flower pots were to be found at the
home of the Middelburg art-lover Melchior Wijntgis, Master of the Mint. Bosschaert and Wijntgis
knew each other very well and were even friends. In 1609 the painter was witness at the baptism of
one of the children of the art-loving magistrate.
39
One of these cloth merchants was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the famous microscopist. In the
1650s, he owned a shop for draper’s goods in the city of Delft and it is believed that the handling
of a ‘thread counter’ (‘dradenteller’ in Dutch) had in some way prepared him for his microscopical
research. Cf. Schierbeek, Van Leeuwenhoek, 1 (1950), 17.
The invention of the telescope, like any other invention, was a prolonged and
intricate process, taking many steps and involving many persons. Whereas
the older historiography was mainly concerned with establishing who was the
‘true’ inventor of the telescope, recent research has tried rather to chart the
entire process. In this paper, I want to highlight the role patronage played in
the introduction of the telescope. It is by now well recognised that patron-
age networks largely determined the cultural dynamics of the time, and Hans
Lipperhey, too, had to rely on patronage mechanisms when, in 1608, he drew
attention to his newly built telescope and tried to get some rewards for it. It is
in this context that his application for a patent should be assessed.
The dynamics of patronage in the Dutch Republic were different from
those in a monarchy. In the case of Lipperhey and the telescope, the patron in
question, count Maurits of Nassau, stadtholder of Holland, was no prince, his
court was not really his court, and his possibilities for patronage were there-
fore limited. Until recently, his role as a patron of the arts, or his place in
cultural life generally, was deemed insignificant. However, an exhibition at the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2001 showed that Maurits’ court, although
certainly atypical compared to other courts in Europe, was of more weight
than hitherto assumed. Maurits was certainly in a position to promote things
he liked or deemed important, as the telescope appears to have been.
Maurits’ role in the introduction of the telescope has not been analysed so
far. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition only briefly mentioned the
instrument. It may be argued, however, that he was one of the key figures in
the introduction of the telescope. His role in this respect also sheds new light
on the dynamics of patronage in the Low Countries.2
1
I owe gratitude to Dr. Huib Zuidervaart and to Dr. Dirk van Miert for commenting upon an
earlier version of this article, and to Dr. Kerry Magruder for correcting the English.
2
The catalogue: Zandvliet et al., Maurits (2000); see page 281 for the telescope.
3
For an excellent overview of the history of the Dutch Republic, see Israel, Dutch Republic (1995). The
authoritative overview of its political institutions is Fruin, Geschiedenis der staatsinstellingen (1980).
74 rienk vermij
Formally, the stadtholder was just a high-ranking official, paid by the States.
In practice, he was much more. The stadtholder preserved certain royal pre-
rogatives, notably the power to renew town magistrates. His principal source
of power and prestige, however, was his commandership of the army, a highly
influential post in a country continuously at war. Besides, it allowed him to
appoint many officers. All this did not turn him into a monarch, however. Real
power lay in the hand of the States, for they disposed of the country’s money.
The States decided about the budgets, they supervised the collection of taxes,
and they made all the payments. The stadtholder had no part in that.
Maurits of Nassau
Born in 1567, Maurits of Nassau was the second son of William the Silent,
the leader of the Dutch Revolt. After the assassination of his father in 1584,
he became stadtholder of the provinces Holland and Zeeland. In 1590-1591,
he also acquired the stadtholderates of Utrecht, Overijssel, and Gelderland.
He was to become stadtholder of Groningen and Drenthe as well, but that
happened years after 1608. Maurits gained wide recognition for his army lead-
ership. In a series of brilliantly waged campaigns, he captured practically all
the Spanish strongholds in the northern Netherlands, thereby securing the
independence of the seven provinces. Because of this, he acquired European
renown. At the imperial diet at Regensburg in 1597, the Elector of Cologne
proposed appointing him as imperial commander in chief against the Turks:
no other army general in Europe enjoyed comparable prestige.4
His successes in war were largely the result of the army reforms which were
carried out under his command. These enhanced discipline and organization,
but also introduced a more scientific way of conducting operations. In his re-
forms, Maurits closely cooperated with his cousin Willem Lodewijk of Nassau,
the stadtholder of Friesland (another of the seven provinces). It seems to have
been Willem Lodewijk who propagated a more scientific way of warfare in the
first place, based on the study of ancient authors. Maurits was less well versed
in history, but he certainly had a deep interest in the engineering side. His
sieges owed their success a great deal to an intelligent use of engineering. He
knew all his engineers, and even all work-masters, by name. Upon his initia-
tive, an engineering school was founded in Leiden. Dutch engineers became
4
For a recent biography see Van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau (2000). On the Elector’s initiative,
ibidem, 160.
5
Van Nimwegen, ‘Deser landen crijchsvolck’ (2006), 83-102, 116-127. Westra, Nederlandse ingenieurs
(1992), 74-81.
6
For a description of Maurits’ court, see Zandvliet, ‘Het hof ’ (2000).
76 rienk vermij
However, it was hardly his own court. For one thing, there was the question
of money. For the first twenty years of his stadtholderate, Maurits was con-
stantly short of money (after that time, his financial position became gradu-
ally more secure). His family had lost most of its possessions during the early
years of the revolt, so for his income, Maurits was dependent on his salary as
stadtholder and army commander, and on other special remunerations the
States might allow him. The splendour in which he lived had been granted to
him by the States and was in part not even his property. Many of his court-
iers (noblemen, guards, his physician, his minister) were directly paid by the
States. His residences in various cities were owned and furnished by the States
or the municipalities. Whether Maurits himself had any say in the way they
were furnished is doubtful. The amount of money spent on them or the char-
acter of the decorations reflected the importance the States attached to their
stadtholder, not Maurits’ own preferences. In like manner, the many portraits
of Maurits that circulated and were presented to foreign dignitaries reflected
the States’ policy, not any courtly ambitions of Maurits himself.7
Maurits was thus hardly in the position to act as a real patron of the arts.
Moreover, his own interests were mainly with the army and not with the nice-
ties of courtly culture. He preferred the more rustic sides of noble living. He
liked hunting and he kept exotic animals. His favourite pastime was horse-
breeding. Indeed, he liked horses (‘your dearest courtiers,’ as his secretary, the
poet Constantijn Huygens called them) more than paintings. The sole paint-
ing which was certainly commissioned by him, actually portrays a horse. Only
in those arts which were closely related to the military, he took on an active
role as a patron. He promoted armoury, attracting armourers of international
standing to The Hague. A modern art historian called this ‘maybe Maurits’
most important contribution to the development of the arts in his time.’ 8
However, Maurits was not an illiterate soldier. In his youth, he had studied
at the academies of Heidelberg (briefly) and Leiden, where the famous scholar
Justus Lipsius was among his teachers, and where he had been trained not just
in horse-riding and fencing, but also in Latin, French, law, history, draught-
manship, and mathematics. His army reforms were carried out in agreement
with the scholarly ideals of his time, with constant reference to the works of
ancient authors. Some artists, notably Jacob de Gheyn (the Younger), appear
7
Zandvliet, ‘Het hof ’ (2000); Kloek, ‘Maurits en de beeldende kunst’ (2000).
8
Van Deursen, Maurits (2000), 220-221. On the horse’s painting: Kloek, ‘Maurits en de beeldende
kunst’ (2000), 144; Zandvliet, Maurits (2000), 234-235. On Maurits and armoury: Kloek, ‘Maurits
en de beeldende kunst’ (2000), 140.
9
On Maurits’ education: Groenveld, ‘Man met de loden schoenen’ (2000), 17-18. On De Gheyn
and Maurits’ court: Kloek, ‘Maurits en de beeldende kunst’ (2000), 144-145; Zandvliet, Maurits
(2000), 125, 314-316.
10
Kloek, ‘Maurits en de beeldende kunst’ (2000), 140.
11
The main biography of Stevin is still Dijksterhuis, Simon Stevin (1943). For an abbreviated
English version: Dijksterhuis, Simon Stevin (1970). In several respects, the biography is dated. For
a collection of recent studies on Stevin, see Elkhadem & Bracke Simon Stevin (2004). On Stevin’s
relation to Maurits, see ibidem, 23-24; Zandvliet, Maurits (2000), 276-277; Kubbinga, ‘Stevin en
Maurits’ (1994).
78 rienk vermij
Maurits had been an eager student who often elaborated upon the matter pro-
posed, and Stevin inserted his contributions respectfully into the text. From
Stevin’s writings, it is therefore possible to get some idea of the kind of math-
ematics Maurits was interested in. It is not surprising that much is of a purely
practical nature: fortification, engineering, and other military affairs figure
prominently, as well as book-keeping and the bridling of horses.12
However, Maurits’ mathematical interests were not limited to practical ap-
plications only. Theoretical issues too had his attention. The ‘Mathematical
memoirs’ contain a large section on the principles of astronomy, and here too
we find Maurits’ comments. Maurits’ interest in astronomy appears also in
another instance. When in 1597 Maurits learned of the troubles which the
famous astronomer Tycho Brahe was having in Denmark, he immediately of-
fered him an asylum in the Dutch Republic. He added that he had to arrange
this with the States, who after all had to pay for Tycho’s position, but he was
confident that this would not present a problem. Tycho declined the offer and
instead went to the imperial court of Rudolf II at Prague.13
Mathematicians were well aware of Maurits’ interests and actively sought
his protection. In 1596, Ludolf van Ceulen dedicated his work on the circle
to Maurits. The young Willebrord Snellius, who strove to succeed his father
as professor of mathematics at Leiden university, translated Simon Stevin’s
‘Mathematical memoirs’ into Latin and published this translation, in the same
years as the originals, with a dedication to the stadtholder, which must have
pleased both Stevin and Maurits. In 1607, Snellius dedicated still another book
to Maurits, the reconstruction of an ancient geometrical text by Apollonius.
This was not engineering, but rather pure scholarship (another book of re-
constructions of Apollonius was dedicated to Stevin). In later works, Snellius
would integrate practical work (surveying, navigation) and philological schol-
arship, in the same way that Maurits’ army reforms were based both on practi-
cal insights and field trials, as well as study of classical authors.14
Maurits was also interested in gadgets of a technical nature. The best known
example of this is the sailing chariot which Stevin built for Maurits, and which
the latter used to regale high-ranking guests on trips along the seashore. We
know about this chariot mainly from a contemporary engraving by Jacob de
12
Van den Heuvel, ‘Wisconstighe ghedachtenissen’ (2000), passim.
13
On Maurits and astronomy, cf. Vermij, Calvinist Copernicans (2002), 63. For the invitation to
Tycho, see the letter by Frans Gansneb Tengnagel to Tycho Brahe, 6 July 1598, in Tychonis Brahe
Opera Omnia (reprint 1972), 82. Cf. also 95, 98.
14
De Wreede, Willebrord Snellius (2007), 52-53, 61-63. See also Vermij, Calvinist Copernicans
(2002), 22-23.
Gheyn, with Latin verses by Hugo Grotius. De Gheyn was paid for his engrav-
ing by the States General. There is no indication that Maurits had suggested
the production, although this seems probable.15
Maurits’ fondness of engineers and inventions must have been widely
known. When, by September 1608, a spectacle-maker in Middelburg showed
the local regents an instrument with which one could see far-off things as if
they were nearby, the stadtholder must have been the obvious person to refer
the matter to. On 25 September 1608, the ‘gecommitteerde raden’ of Zeeland
sent the man to The Hague with a letter to Zeeland’s representatives there, in
which they were asked to gain Lipperhey an interview with the stadtholder.
One might ask why exactly the ‘gecommitteerde raden’ wrote this letter, and
not the burgomasters of Middelburg, who might be deemed the more obvious
body to act in the interest of one of their citizens. Probably, it was because the
‘gecommitteerde raden’ stood in regular exchange with the deputies at The
Hague anyway.
15
Zandvliet, Maurits (2000), 274-275. Kloek, ‘Maurits en de beeldende kunst’ (2000), 144.
80 rienk vermij
Lipperhey at The Hague
The Hague at the time was the scene of negotiations on a possible truce be-
tween the United Provinces and the King of Spain (which would indeed be
concluded the following year). Not all parties in the Netherlands felt that such
a truce was a good idea and the negotiations caused a lot of tension and dis-
trust among the Netherlanders themselves. Maurits was deeply suspicious of
the intentions of the people promoting the truce, foremost among whom was
the grand pensionary of Holland, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. The relations
between the two men became quite chilly and the stadtholder became, quite
uncharacteristically, deeply immersed in politics. People felt that the very exis-
tence of the state was at stake, so one would expect that they had other things
on their minds than optical instruments. Eventually, the presence of so many
high-ranking diplomats would help gain the instrument renown, but initially,
it must have seemed that Lipperhey arrived at a rather unlucky moment.
There is no record of what exactly happened when Lipperhey arrived at The
Hague, but apparently, even though deeply involved in grave matters of state,
Maurits did not miss the opportunity to have the new instrument demon-
strated to him and then kept it in his possession. According to a contemporary
pamphlet, Maurits showed the instrument to the marquis of Spinola, the com-
mander of the King of Spain’s army in the southern Netherlands, who hap-
pened to be in The Hague for the negotiations.16 Spinola left The Hague on
30 September, so the demonstration must have taken place before that date.
Lipperhey must, therefore, indeed have gained access to the stadtholder and
offered him his telescope within a few days. The official documents corrobo-
rate this. When on 4 October the States General decided that they wanted to
see and test the instrument, they stipulated that this examination would take
place ‘on the tower of the quarters of His Excellency’ [= Maurits]. Evidently,
they would not have bothered the stadtholder, had not his quarters been the
place where the instrument was kept.17
Having accepted the gift, Maurits of course had also accepted the obliga-
tion to give the inventor something in return which showed his satisfaction.
As stated before, the stadtholder had only a very limited budget and was ac-
customed to devolve any extraordinary expenses for his court upon the States.
Feeling that a handsome reward for Lipperhey would be in place, he referred
him to the States General, no doubt promising him his support. So it is that
we find Lipperhey, a week after the letter by the ‘gecommitteerde raden’ of
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 41, 36. The departure of Spinola is mentioned in the resolutions
17
18
On the various ways patents could be used, see Biagioli, ‘From Print to Patents’ (2006).
19
On patents in the Dutch Republic: Doorman, Octrooien (1940).
20
Resolution of 2 October 1608 as quoted in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 36: ‘gelijck d’Heeren
Staten gebleken is’; Van Helden’s own translation (‘as had been shown to the... States’) seems not
wholly accurate. See also Resolution of 4 October 1608. On Maurits’ presence in the States see
Rijperman, Resolutiën (1970), 323, footnote 6.
82 rienk vermij
Still, the decisions made by the States General do presuppose some knowledge
of the instrument. Immediately, on 2 October, it was decided to ask Lipperhey
whether he would be able to construct it in such a way, that one would be able
to look through it with two eyes instead of one (this is normally interpreted as
meaning a binocular telescope). On 4 October, the States also demanded that
‘christal de roche’ (literally rock crystal, but more likely some high quality glass)
was to be used for the lenses. These suggestions, made at a moment when the
delegates had not even seen the instrument, will hardly have been the result of
an open discussion during the meeting. The improvements must have been sug-
gested by Maurits, who in this way commissioned a telescope according to his
own wishes and specifications, to be paid for by the States General.21
The suggestion of using ‘christal de roche’ instead of glass is especially interest-
ing, as it must have been made by someone who knew more or less the construc-
tion of the instrument and had found that the quality of the glass was vital to
the working. Some persons must have investigated the instrument beforehand,
discussed it, and formed some idea upon it. I think it is fair to assume that such
discussions were waged in the circles around Maurits, where people would have
easy access to the telescope. This would first of all include his relatives, among
whom his half-brother Frederik Hendrik and his cousin Willem Lodewijk
would stand out (it is tempting to think that the three telescopes which were
finally commissioned were destined for Maurits and these two men). As would
be expected with courtly instruments, Maurits also showed it to distinguished
visitors. As stated before, he demonstrated it to the marquis of Spinola.22
Whether these men were in a position not just to try and admire the in-
strument, but also to study it and suggest improvements, might be questioned.
Maurits probably admitted, or called in, other people as well, who might be
deemed more expert in such matters. A probable candidate would be Jacques
Wijts, a army captain with scholarly inclinations who belonged to Maurits’ inner
circle. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that Maurits, as a mathematician, would
not show the gadget to some of his engineers. Simon Stevin at the time was liv-
ing at The Hague. There is no evidence that he ever saw or handled the telescope,
but it seems plausible that Maurits would have consulted him. It is therefore
not impossible that the suggestions for improvements stemmed partly from
Stevin. Other possible consultants would include the engineer Samuel Cloot,
curator of Maurits’ collection of maps, mathematical instruments and military
models, and the artist Jacob de Gheyn.23
21
Resolutions of 2 and 4 October 1608, quoted in Van Helden, Invention, 36; Rijperman, Resolutiën
(1970), 623-624, offers just a summary.
22
On Spinola: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 41-42.
23
On Wijts: Zandvliet, Maurits (2000), 239-240, 246-248. On Cloot: Ibidem, 78.
24
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 39-40.
25
See the appendix.
84 rienk vermij
father, Adriaen Anthonisz, was not just a local regent, but also the Republic’s
chief engineer. In 1608, he was in the final days of his career, but still enjoyed
an immense reputation. It is most likely that he knew about Lipperhey’s in-
vention not just from the official reports to the city government, but directly
from his colleagues in the vicinity of the stadtholder who had studied the
instrument.26
As son of Adriaen Anthonisz, Metius had easy access to the stadtholder
and could be sure that his claims would be considered seriously. Maurits ap-
parently referred him also to the States with a recommendation. Whether he
really found Metius’ instrument as good as Lipperhey’s cannot be checked.
Metius requested that he be granted a patent so that other persons would
not be allowed to copy his invention. This was asking a bit too much. On 17
October 1608 the States replied that ‘the petitioner was admonished to inves-
tigate further, in order to bring his invention to the greatest perfection.’ Only
then could they decide upon a patent. Metius more or less had evoked such a
response by emphasizing that his instrument was still defective and claiming
that he would be able to accomplish much more in the near future. The pill
was sweetened by allowing Metius a hundred guilders, no doubt in return for
the telescope which he had left in the hands of Maurits. Whether the money
accurately represents the value Maurits attached to the instrument, or whether
Metius was dealt with somewhat liberally for being the son of an important
state-official, is impossible to say.27
26
Ibidem, 22. On Metius senior: Westra, Nederlandse ingenieurs (1992), 36-44; Wortel, ‘Adriaen
Anthonisz’ (1990).
27
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 40.
28
For information on the relations between the States of Holland and the States General, I owe
gratitude to dr. Ida Nijenhuis (Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, The Hague).
29
Notes of representative of Medemblik, in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 36-37. For the original
notes, see the appendix.
30
Ibidem.
86 rienk vermij
side. As for the telescope, as stated above it seems rather unlikely that the
States of Holland would appoint delegates to inspect the stadtholder’s instru-
ment in his own quarters without the latter’s approval.31
The meeting of 17 October even took place in Maurits’ quarters, as the lat-
ter had demanded that the States come over to discuss some political matters
with him. These affairs having been finished, two other issues were mentioned:
the request by Jacob Metius, and a second invention, an instrument to measure
the variation of the compass in order to find longitude (as stated, the States
General had offered a reward for the solution of this problem). The inventor
is not named, but by other sources can be identified as the Amsterdam math-
ematician Barent Keteltas. He had asked the States General for a patent on his
instrument on 19 August. A decision would not be made before 22 October,
but at their meeting with Maurits of 17 October, the States of Holland were al-
ready informed of the conclusions of the experts who had examined the inven-
tion. It seems that Maurits was closely following the examination of Keteltas’
instrument. Apparently, it was not uncommon for him to act as a backstage
patron to new inventions.32
31
On Emanuel of Portugal: Rijperman, Resolutiën (1970), 614-615. Van Deursen, Maurits (2000),
162, 164, 221-222; Zandvliet, Maurits (2000), 173. On the engineer’s report: Rijperman, Resolutiën
(1970), 517.
32
On Keteltas: Rijperman, Resolutiën (1970), 623; Davids, Zeewezen (1986), 72. See also the ap-
pendix.
33
For Marius’ account, see Van Helden, Invention (1977), 47.
Sirtori’s account in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 48, 50. Snellius to Aemilius Rosendalius,
34
1610: Utrecht, University Library, Hss VII A 26 (‘conspicilia duo... quibus res objectae, multe qui-
dem ampliores sese visui nostro ingerunt; utinam etiam tanto clariores’). Cf. De Wreede, Willebrord
Snellius, 68-69.
88 rienk vermij
patronage, as one of the main driving forces behind early modern scientific
discovery. Without denying the determining influence of patronage for the
cultural and intellectual life of the period, it is important clearly to discern
what this factor accomplished and what not. Princes promoted certain forms
of what we might call science, but certainly not all. Generally speaking, they
were interested in activities which enhanced their prestige, which were of di-
rect practical (especially military) use, or which could be seen as part of noble
culture. On the other hand, there was little interest in abstract speculations or
intricate mathematics.35
Maurits’ interest in the telescope was well in line with general courtly cul-
ture. It was an interesting plaything, a subject for demonstrations and con-
versations, which gave Maurits credit among his peers. For that, one did not
need to be aware of its potential for astronomical discoveries. In line with aris-
tocratic values, its purpose was above all defined in military terms. Of course,
this may partly have been to legitimate the spending of considerable sums of
state money on it. It would be interesting to know how far the spyglass was
really used for military purposes. Sure, there was also a good deal of ‘scientific’
work on the instrument, as could only be expected at the court of a prince so
interested in engineering and mathematics. But these efforts were concerned
with ways to improve upon the instrument – turning it into a binocular, or
using a different kind of glass. Such improvements did not necessarily make it
more apt to offer a new view of the universe. A binocular telescope aims at easy
handling and is fit for courtiers rather than investigators.
To ask why something did not happen is probably a wrong question, but it
may help us realize that scientific discoveries at the time were not self-evident
and required a particular set of conditions, which probably went well beyond
the common ideals of the time. Galileo was successful, it can be claimed, not
because he was part of a world of courtly patronage, but because, although
part of this world, he did not allow himself to be directed by its values. He
succeeded in following and imposing his own program, making use, of course,
of the social instruments which presented themselves at the time. Maurits, on
the other hand, was as interested in mathematics and astronomy as any prince
in Europe, but he was a military and a nobleman, not a visionary.
35
Zoomers & Zuidervaart, Embassies of the King of Siam; 49. The observation of hitherto unknown
small stars was probably not as revolutionary as it seems. Several sixteenth-century authors attest that
the idea of the galaxy as a congeries of many small stars was not uncommon at the time. See Jaki, The
Milky Way (1972) 84-85. Cf. Bagioli, Galileo, Courtier (1993).
APPENDIX
90 rienk vermij
In 1854, the historical journal De Navorscher published a passage from this
manuscript on the presentation by Lipperhey of his newly invented telescope.36
This passage was reprinted in the works by De Waard and Van Helden on the
invention of the telescope. However, it appears that they simply copied the
passage from De Navorscher and did not check the original source. In 2008, as
part of the activities celebrating the 400th anniversary of the telescope, Huib
Zuidervaart, of the Huygens Institute in The Hague, studied the manuscript
afresh. This not only gave a better understanding of the exact context of the
known passage, but it also resulted in the discovery of another passage on the
telescope, this time about the presentation by Jacob Metius. By Zuidervaart’s
kind permission, the passage, and as much of the context as seemed relevant,
is published here for the first time.
Den xvij-en octobris 1608 voor noen waren wij ’s morgens by Zijne Excellentie ont-
boden te comen. [...]
Daer was oock beneffens d’inventie van de brilman, by de zoon van Mr Adriaen
Anthonisz van Alcmaer vertoont gelycken instrument by hem geinventeert al voor
2 jaeren ende alhier vertoont, versoeckende meede octroij etc. Maer is verstaen alsoo
met dander eerst gehandelt es, dat men deesen geen octroij alsnoch can accorderen,
niettemin dat men hem voor zyn moeyten een vereeringe doen zal van 100 gulden
ende hem oock animeren dat hy nairsticheyt doen zal, omme zyn instrument te moe-
gen sulcx verbeeteren, dattet overtreft de ander, ende dat men naemaels daerop zal
moegen letten.
Oock wasser een instrument vertoont by een jongman van Amsterdam, daer meede
hy wilde verseeckeren datmen by affwyckinge vande naelde soude connen soo wel op
zee als te lande affmeeten longitudinen, oft weeten hoe verre men is by oosten ofte by
westen der rechten meridiaen consequentelijk waermen is op hoe veele graden. Dit
is by eenige besichtigt ende van goeden apparentie verclaert. Hy versouct 300 gulden
voor zijn costen ende moeyten. Mits soo wanneer het oprecht bevonden ende het
gestelde premium hem toegeoordeelt wert datmen dezelve penningen daeraf weder
corten zal. Maer en is alsnoch daerop niet gedisponeert.
36
De Navorscher 4 (1854), 101.
Besides the invention of the spectacle maker [Lipperhey], a similar instrument was
presented, by the son of Mr Adriaen Anthonisz of Alkmaar, already invented by him
two years ago and shown here [at The Hague], applying for a patent etc. But it was
resolved that, because the negotiations with the other were initiated first, [Metius]
cannot be granted a patent for the time being, but that he will be granted an allow-
ance of a hundred guilders for his trouble, and to encourage him to make efforts to
improve his instrument, so that it will surpass the other, and that [his application] will
be considered afterwards.
92 rienk vermij
The long road to the invention
of the telescope
Rolf Willach
Introduction
A brief entry in the minutes of the States General in The Hague, dated 2
October 1608, mentions that a certain Hans Lipperhey, a spectacle maker
from Middelburg, had presented a wonderful device with which distant ob-
jects could be seen as clearly as if they were nearby. Lipperhey claimed that
this device was his own invention, and he requested a 30-year patent on it or a
annual stipend for the rest of his life. This is the very first mention (confirmed
by numerous historical investigations) of a revolutionary instrument, which
can now be regarded as the first serviceable telescope.
The telescope and the microscope (and the devices that evolved from them
in the 20th century such as the radio telescope and the electron microscope),
operating on similar physical principles, are the instruments which have most
advanced our present knowledge about the framework of the universe and the
structure of the atom. These facts alone justify the celebration of the 400th an-
niversary of this epochal event and to reflect on the events which led up to it.
Within a few decades of the telescope’s invention, doubts were already
raised about its origin and its true inventor; these debates continue to the pres-
ent day. Another question that has been addressed by historians of science dur-
ing the past century is why the instrument first turned up in early seventeenth-
century Middelburg, and why it was not invented earlier. This problem was
already clearly formulated in the 1940s by the Italian optical researcher Vasco
Ronchi, who in several publications stated:
Why, if eyeglasses were known as early as [the] 1280’s, did it not occur to anybody
before the end of the sixteenth century that two eyeglass lenses might be combined to
produce a more powerful optical instrument? Was there some fundamental method-
ological obstacle that accounts for a three-hundred-year hiatus between the appear-
ance of eyeglasses and the invention of the telescope? 1
1
Ronchi, Optics: the Science of Vision (1991)
The present author concluded that the only way to solve this riddle was
to follow the development of lens-grinding techniques of medieval and ear-
ly-modern spectacle makers by a comprehensive optical analysis of spectacle
lenses dating from the 13th to the early seventeenth century. A summary of the
results of this investigation are presented in this paper. 2
TECHNOLOGY
The technology of grinding crystals in Antiquity and in the High Middle Ages
It has long been recognized that fairly well ground rock crystal lenses date
to Antiquity. Examples are the lenses found by Heinrich Schliemann dur-
ing his excavations of Troy, similar lenses from the Mycenaean culture, now
in the Herakleion Museum in Crete, and the Viking lenses found in differ-
ent treasure-troves on Gotland in the Baltic Sea, now in the Fornsal Museum
at Visby.3 These lenses have one important feature in common: their surfaces
are obviously more or less non-spherical. Most likely, they were ground on a
2
See also: Ilardi, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (2007) and Willach, The Long Route
to the Invention of the Telescope (2008).
3
Ahlström, ‘Swedish Vikings and optical lenses’ (1950); Schmidt,Wilms & Lingelbach, ‘The Visby
Lenses’ (1999); Lingelbach & Schmidt, ‘Aspärische Linsen aus dem 11. Jahrhundert’ (2002).
94 rolf willach
flat rotating grinding-stone. Grinding in a mould would never have resulted in
such highly non-spherical surfaces. As an example, I discuss now a rather large
rock-crystal lens from the ninth century known as the ‘Lothar Crystal’ (ill. 1).
This crystal, preserved in the British Museum, is biconvex with a diameter of
114 mm. On the rear side (with the smallest curvature), there is an engraving,
made with a sharp diamond, depicting the life of Saint Susanna and the inscrip-
tion states that it was made for the Carolingian king Lothar II (855-869).
In the diagram (ill. 2) showing the refractive power of this lens as function of
distance from the centre, one recognizes – and this is typical for all old lenses –
an increase of the refractive power towards the rim of the lens. This indicates that
this lens was ground in the antique manner on a flat rotating grinding-stone.
Towards the High Middle Ages the number of surviving crystal-lenses in-
creases slightly. They were made in the workshops of different monasteries for
decoration and embellishment of precious liturgical objects of art, especially reli-
quaries.
An example is the large reading stone (lapis ad legendum) at the center of the
41-cm ‘disc cross’ (scheibenkreuz) in the cathedral of Hildesheim (Germany),
which dates from about 1140 (ill. 3). Another example is the reading stone
in the center of the 48-cm high ‘Big Bernward-cross,’ made around 1150.
Behind the central rock crystal was a wooden splinter from the holy cross (now
lost), presented around 1000 by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III to bishop
Bernward of Hildesheim (ill. 4).
Most of these wonderful crafts and techniques for fashioning these objects
of art have been lost over the centuries. But in the surviving objects, we can
clearly recognize the technique of their manufacture on a rotating flat surface.
In most cases the oval-shaped stones were ground to a plano-convex form. If
we put such a stone with its flat surface on a manuscript page, we see that the
text under it is magnified. This impressive magnification is easy to recognize,
so there is no doubt that the optical properties of such stones must also have
been known since Antiquity. In the scriptoria of monasteries this property
must have been very useful. Older monks who suffered from presbyopia would
surely have used them for reading, and such devices became known as ‘reading
stones.’ Their refracting powers are in the range of 20 to 40 diopters.
However, reading stones were not a convenient solution to the problem
of aging eyes. They work as magnifying glasses where the text under scrutiny
had to be put inside the focal length. Therefore they could not correct the
limited range of power of the lens in the human eye, and although the image
was magnified, it remained blurred. And, even worse, the stones were totally
useless for writing.
Dioptrical vision aids existed in the monasteries long before the invention of spec-
tacles in the late thirteenth century. Originally they were made in the form of slightly
convex rock crystal discs, but for a completely different purpose than for assisting
96 rolf willach
aging eyes. That they eventually served this purpose as well, came about only by sheer
chance, probably during the control of the polishing quality of their surfaces by the
stone grinding monks.
The question is: can we prove this hypothesis? Towards the end of the elev-
enth century political events happened which were of highest importance to
Western culture. In the year 1095 Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade.
As a result the following two hundred years were completely dominated by
these expeditions. One of the numerous consequences of the crusades was a
flood of relics supposedly from the Holy Land. This huge increase of relics had
the consequence that the style of the reliquaries changed dramatically. Before
these events, the relics, often consisting of only very small fragments, were put
behind the central stone of a cross or in a small receptacle, and were therefore
invisible to worshippers. But now, every town and every monastery that could
acquire one or more relics, presented them proudly in costly reliquaries. Such a
remarkable reliquary can be found today in the treasure room of the Cathedral
of Halberstadt (ill. 5).
4
Brommer & Frey, Das Konstanzer Münster (2005).
98 rolf willach
Ill. 7. Left: A portion of a medieval text as seen by a presbyopic (unaided) eye of four
diopters at a distance of 25 cm., compared (Right) with the situation in which the
central part of the replica lens is placed in front of this eye. In that arrangement a large
part of the script can be read with ease. The non-sphericity of the outer part of the lens
surfaces explains the increasingly blurring towards the rim.
the monks that optical means could assist aging eyes much more than could
doubtful tinctures or other medical remedies. With this result, the second
problem noted earlier – namely the lack in understanding of the human eye –
although unsolved, became irrelevant. We are nonetheless still rather far from
a solution. Two serious obstacles remained in the process of the invention of
spectacles:
1. The problem of the impurities in the fabrication of glass.
2. The grinding technique on a flat surface, which makes it impossible to grind
pairs of lenses with equal powers.
5
Matson, ‘The composition and working properties of ancient glasses’ (1951).
After the molten glass substance had been heated for many hours, it was still
so full of air bubbles that it was completely non-transparent. Therefore the
next step was the so-called ‘clear-melting.’ The furnace was heated by working
the bellows day and night until a temperature of some 12000 C was reached.
During this process more and more of the bubbles disappeared. But now a
new serious inconvenience emerged. In this high heat the fire-clay linings of
the furnace wall slowly began to dissolve and ooze as long filaments and stria-
tions into the molten glass. Therefore the melt never became entirely clear.
There remained a lot of air bubbles and it was full of striations, the remnants
of the furnace wall. This glass was completely unsuitable even for simple opti-
cal use. This was the state of glass-making technique toward the end of the
thirteenth century.
6
Greeff, ‘Eine venetianische Brillenmacherordnung’ (1922).
These were:
1. The substance was so pure that the glass remained uncoloured, except for a
very faint yellow tinge.
2. Glass made with natron as a melting point reducer showed many fewer air
bubbles and striations after the purifying melt.
3. The glass did not decompose after a few years as a result of humidity.
To find the key to this last enigma, we will leave Italy and travel to Northern
Germany, in a much later period. In 1953, during the renovation of the nun’s
choir in the monastery of the small village of Wienhausen, in the dust under
the oak floor workers discovered several spectacles among more than a thou-
sand objects from the early fourteenth until the early sixteenth century. The
oldest ones were three rivet spectacles, dating from the mid fourteenth century
(See ill. 8).7 It was especially surprising that the glass of all these spectacles was
in very fine and transparent condition. Some years later, in the neighbouring
monastery of Isenhagen, another half of a pair of rivet spectacles was discov-
ered, again in useable condition.
More glasses of rivet spectacles have been discovered in the recent past in
the same region of Germany. In the four edges of the cover of a book-case,
dating from 1330 and today preserved in the Museum of Lüneburg, there are
four rivet spectacles’ lenses, the flat rear sides painted with the symbols of the
four evangelists.8
Test of the Rivet Spectacles of Wienhausen, Isenhagen and the Gothic Bookcase
Because I had hopes that these oldest existing spectacle glasses contained the
secret of their making, I examined each of them very carefully. The surfaces
were measured with coordinate measuring equipment and a stereo-microscope,
and then optically with a Ronchi-Test. For reasons of space, I can only give a
summary of the results. The investigations of the twelve lenses brought me to
the following insights:
1. All these lenses are nearly exactly plano-convex. The refractive powers are
in the range of 3 to 4 diopters. On all flat surfaces we measured a non-
sphericity like that of the rock crystal lenses of Antiquity and the High
7
Appuhn, ‘Ein denkwürdiger Fund’ (1958).
8
Appuhn, ‘Hinterglasmalereien auf den ältesten Brillengläsern’ (1963).
From the results of the investigations of these twelve lenses, we finally solved
the enigma of their making, and are now able to reconstruct the process. As
we saw, by about 1280, monocular vision aids had already been in use in
monasteries for more than a century. These had been made of rock crystal in
the monasteries’ own workshops with the age-old grinding method.. It was te-
dious work which required great skill and experience, and an acceptable result
remained a matter of luck.
Now, it is easy to believe, that the rumours of the invention of the ‘cristal-
lum’ came to the ears of the monks in their grinding workshops, possibly even
in a monastery in Venice itself. One of these monks probably realized that it
should be possible to make these vision-aiding discs, not from rock-crystal,
but from this new glass, which was as clear as the best rock crystals but much
softer. He perhaps brought such a crystal vision aid to a Venetian glassworker
and explained his problem. And one of these glass workers must have had
the following idea, which, while obvious to a glass blower, was nevertheless
ingenious:
You should not make the vision aid by grinding,’ he answered. ‘You should rather blow
it as a glass ball of cristallum in the required diameter. Then cut this ball into small discs,
by an old technique: immediately after blowing the glass ball, a small part of a copper
pipe, cooled in a flask of water, with a diameter corresponding to the required diameter
of the discs you wish, has to be put on the still-hot glass ball. This sudden cooling results
in a circular crack along the rim of the copper pipe.’ Then the pipe is cooled quickly
again and a second, and a third glass disc are cut with this method, and so on until the
whole ball is full of such circular fractures. After careful cooling the glass ball is broken
In this way it is easy to understand how lenses, like those of the rivet spec-
tacles in Wienhausen, with flat surfaces (obviously ground on a rotating flat
disc) and convex surfaces that show no traces of grinding but contain small
raised air bubbles and striations, can only result from this revolutionary glass
blowing technique.
In my opinion this appears to be the solution of the old riddle about the
making of the first spectacle lenses, and we see that spectacles were not the re-
sult of intellectual breakthroughs in the laws of optics. On the contrary, the in-
vention came about through many small steps taken over several centuries for
completely different reasons and never for aiding aging eyes. But on one day
all the necessary knowledge was available and only a clever mind was needed
to combine it and put it together. This ingenious idea to make, by blowing,
identical glass lenses that could be worn in pairs in front of both eyes, was the
birth of spectacles.
The development of spectacles in the Later Middle Ages and in the Renaissance
We have seen how the technical problems, which were still unsolved in the
early twelfth century, had been overcome towards the end of the thirteenth
century. All that was now needed was a practical frame for fixing the glasses
in a convenient position in front of both eyes. Rivet spectacles were the first
solution and it was so successful, that they remained hardly unchanged during
the next two hundred years. This is illustrated by a large number of surviving
pictures and portraits of persons wearing rivet spectacles. (Cf. ill. 9).
The knowledge of how the earliest spectacle glasses were made, solves the
riddle of the observed astigmatism of the convex surfaces. Due to gravity, it is
impossible to blow an exactly spherical glass ball, and all lenses made by this
technique show some degree of astigmatism. Therefore, such non-spherical
lenses were completely unsuitable for use as telescope objectives. The glass-ball-
blowing technique, as brilliant as it was for spectacle lenses, was a dead end for
the invention of the telescope!
Strobl, Glastechnik des Mittelalters (1990): Aus der Schedula des Theophilus, 57 and 84.
9
We should not expect that the Venetians succeeded in protecting their secret
for a long time. As we read in a chronicle of 1313 written at Santa Catharina
in Pisa, the monk Alessandro Spina was able to make spectacles and taught
the art to everyone who was sufficiently skilled to undertake it. Nevertheless,
it was not easy to make spectacles, and finding appropriate glass was a par-
ticularly great obstacle. Cities such as Florence and Pisa, which at this time
also had a flourishing glass trade, did not have access to the Egyptian natron,
because the Venetians defended their monopoly in this region. But natron is
nothing else than sodium carbonate. It can be produced in exactly the same
way as potash is, though not from the ash of burnt trees, but rather from the
ash of burnt seaweed.
If dried seaweed is burnt, then after washing the ash and evaporating the
solution, we get a white salt, but it is not based on potassium. It is now sodium
carbonate because the main salts dissolved in sea water are those of sodium,
rather than of potassium. But the available amount of seaweed is much too
small for producing glass in high quantities. Therefore the North-Italian cities
always used a mix of potash and soda in their glass factories. If the amount
of potash is not too high, a usable product will also result. Such glass, how-
ever, did not have the same quality as the pure soda glass made in Venice.
Ordnungen der Nürnberger Brillenmacher’ (1936); ZVA. 450 Jahre im Dienste des Sehens (1985),
15; Müller, ‘Das Original der Regensburger Brillenmacherordnung’ (1921), 129-130.
Optical test of 57 lenses from the Early Sixteenth to the Mid-Seventeenth Century
In order to find out when lens quality reached the necessary level for use as
telescope objective, I used both a Ronchi-test and a telescope test. Therefore I
photographed an ophthalmological test-plate at a distance of 6 meters, using
a modern lens as eyepiece and the old spectacle glass as the objective. Some
results are shown in the next illustrations (Ills. 10-13).
11
Sirturus Telescopium (1618), CAPVT III, ‘De hodierna huius artis corruptela.’
Ill. 11. Left: Ronchi-image of the lens of a Wienhousen-spectacle, made before 1530.
The lines in the inner part are fairly well parallel. But the outer part is extremely bad
due to the increase of the refractive power towards the rim. Right: Telescope test with
the same lens. The magnification is 3.3 times. The telescope image of the test plate is
clearly decipherable, with exception of the last two lines. As the Ronchi-lines are very
curved in the outer part of the lens the telescope image is not totally clear. This lens
arrangement cannot be called a telescope. But nevertheless it shows the effect of mag-
nification of far objects fairly well. Therefore we will classify this lens as good.
CONCLUSIONS
From the test of these 57 spectacle glasses, dating from the early sixteenth to
the mid-seventeenth century, we can draw the following conclusions:
1. Five of these lenses (that is approximately 10%) are comparable to the glass
in the leather-framed spectacles of Wienhausen. They are of fairly good
quality and with them it is possible to see far-away objects clearly magni-
fied.
2. Four glasses are within the range of the Venetian glass signed ‘Picinelli’ and
are classified as mediocre. In a telescopic arrangement one can recognize
far-away objects magnified, but they are very blurred.
3. The remaining 48 glasses are extremely bad. What is of special interest is
that several of these glasses possibly date from the early seventeenth cen-
tury.
Ill. 13. Left: This is the Ronchi-image of the left glass which is signed ‘Picinelli’.
Although it was made some decades after the Wienhausen spectacles, the lines are very
curved even in the central part. Right: Therefore the test-image looks fairly blurred
and only the largest letters are legible. We classify this lens as mediocre.
Written sources from the Sixteenth Century concerning the combination of two spec-
tacle glasses
These investigations of optical glasses, dating from over more than one hun-
dred years, now clarify four different points:
1. During the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century, the techniques of
lens grinding did not undergo any substantial progress. As such, this in-
sight is not new; the data from reliable optical measurements merely con-
firm what has been well known from written sources for a long time.
2. Sometimes fairly well-made glasses were produced. But this was only by
chance; there was no deeper understanding of the grinding process. But
even such lenses, when combined with eyepiece lenses, do not give a more
detailed image than would the naked eye. Therefore, we can regard such
lens arrangements only as ‘telescopic systems’ or proto-telescopes, but not
as real telescopes.
3. Because of the limited number of well-made lenses in this period we only
12
Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope (1977), 28-35.
13
Ibidem, 36-47; See also Zuidervaart, this volume.
14
Van Helden, ‘The historical problem of the invention of the telescope’ (1975).
Ill. 15. Telescope test with diaphragm of two others of the five best lenses. Second half
sixteenth century. The Ronchi-lines in the outer part are very strongly curved, indicat-
ing serious aberration. But the magnification effect can be seen without any problem,
even without the use of a diaphragm. And, with a diaphragm, these lenses, too, give a
higher resolving power than the naked eye.
When in each of these five best lenses, the diaphragm blocks the aberra-
tions caused by the outer rims of the lenses, the clarity of the telescopic image
is improved in such a way, that the instrument clearly shows more details of
far-away objects than the naked eye does. Therefore, a suitably constructed
diaphragm effectively transforms a simple telescopic device – when made with
higher quality lenses – into a real telescope.
However, it is very important to realize that the diaphragm, in the way
demonstrated, only works with the best lenses available in the early seventeenth
century. Telescopic systems made with mediocre or even bad lenses, when cor-
rected by a diaphragm, do not significantly improve in their performance (See
ill. 16). Tests with mediocre quality lenses from the period make it perfectly
clear that a practical telescope could be made only by a spectacle-maker who
had a varied stock of lenses and many years experience in lens-grinding.
Introduction
On the eve of the invention of the telescope, eyeglasses were widespread and
commonly used, as a variety of sources testify.2 Illustration 1 (see page 116) ap-
pears to be yet another illustration of a man wearing spectacles. However, there
is something odd about it, judging from the surrounding text and context:
‘How one can prevent himself from wearing eyeglasses’ and ‘How one can get
rid of the habit of wearing glasses.’3 The illustration comes from a treatise on
eye diseases, Oftalmodouleia, written by Georg Bartisch (1535-1606) and first
published in 1583, and it is the title page of the chapter on diminishing vision
and ‘weak’ sight. It is clear from the start that Bartisch is more than sceptical
about eyeglasses. He uses all his rhetorical skills to convince the reader of the
harmfulness of eyeglasses. Surprising as this may be, within the medical profes-
sion eyeglasses were not advocated as a correction for diminished sight right
away. Was Bartisch representative of the medical sector as a whole? Yes and no.
Though most physicians did not go so far as to demonise eyeglasses, it is true
that in general they seemed rather reluctant to treat spectacles in their treatises.
Some simply ignored them, others warned of their dangers, and yet others
mentioned them at some point in their treatises but did not include them in
the therapeutic part. If there is one point these treatises had in common, it is
1
I would like to thank Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis and Sven Dupré for their helpful comments on
earlier versions of this paper.
2
On the invention and diffusion of eyeglasses, see for instance Rosen, ‘Invention’ (1956), 13-46
and 183-218; and, more recently, Ilardi, Renaissance Vision (2007), 3-152. Ilardi includes numerous
contemporary illustrations of men wearing spectacles. In his article ‘Eyeglasses and concave lenses,’
341-360, he also provides interesting documentary evidence to prove that concave glasses for myo-
pia were in use at least since the fifteenth century.
3
Wie man sich vor den Prillen und Augenglesern bewaren und enthalten möge. Item wie man sich
von den Prillen und Augenglesern entwehnen und abstechen sölle, Bartisch, Oftalmodouleia (1583),
fol. 31r.
probably that the link between eyeglasses and therapeutics was problematic.
Why the introduction of eyeglasses in therapeutic counsels was so prob-
lematic for physicians can be understood by looking at their ideas about vision
and the diseased body. Indeed, besides culturally shaped factors, a great deal
of this ambiguity seems due to the difficulty of fitting eyeglasses within the
holistic remedies in use, as well as to doubts about how they influenced vision.
For speaking about spectacles is not only speaking about vision, but also about
defective vision. Whereas opticians could speak about how vision occurred in
ideal circumstances, physicians had to formulate a theory of vision that was
in accordance with their views on the diseased eye.4 Hieronymus Mercurialis’
(1530-1606) exposition of the modus visionis and his ideas about eyeglasses is a
telling example of this, and it will therefore constitute the core of my paper.
Spectacles will thus be only part of my story. The bigger picture is how
physicians thought about vision in general, about the way vision takes place,
4
The term opticians refers to those who studied optics.
5
Arguments and evidence for this statement are developed at length in my forthcoming PhD-thesis
De emancipatie van het oog.
6
Lindberg, Theories of Vision (1976), 175.
7
Fernelius,Universa medicina (1656), 85-87; Capivaccio, Opera omnia (1603), 585.
8
‘Sed cur Senes specillis melius vident, cum iuvenes illis hebetentur,’ Heurnius, De morbis oculorum
(1608), 7.
9
Ibidem, 27.
10
Forestus, Observationum (1602), 102-110.
11
On Mercurialis’ life and works, and especially his lecture notes, see Cerasoli & Garavini, ‘Girolamo
Mercuriale’s works’ (2005), 293-341.
12
See my forthcoming PhD-thesis De emancipatie van het oog.
… since vision is a passion rather than an action; because it is clear that vision happens
when the crystalline humour is being affected [...] And because of that explanation
one should say that it was the peculiar dogma of the Peripatetics that vision takes place
through the reception of species alone, and therefore it is no wonder that the Princeps
[Aristotle] said that it was accomplished rather by a passion than by an action.16
However, medical doctors had a different opinion and ‘they thought that it
happened through the reception of species, and the emission of rays. And there-
fore, since the reception of species is a certain passion, but emission rather an
action, it is right to say that they are symptoms of a sort of a damaged action.’17
13
‘A nemine, quod sciam,’ Mercurialis, Tractatus (1590), fol. 5r.
14
‘De visoriae facultatis affectibus, Coecitate, visus diminutione impedimento,’ ibidem, fol. 1r.
15
‘Actionis visoriae loesae,’ ibidem, fol. 1v. The italics are mine.
16
‘Cum visio sit potius passio, quam actio; nam clarum est, visionem fieri patiente humore crystalli-
no (...). Pro cuius resolutione dicendum est, fuisse peculiare Peripateticorum dogma, quod visio fiat
per solam specierum receptionem, & ideo non est mirum, si Princeps dixerit, magis passione, quam
actione perfici,’ ibidem, fol. 2r.
17
‘Existimarunt fieri per receptionem specierum, & radiorum emissionem; unde cum receptio spe-
ciei passio quaedam sit, emissio autem, potius actio, iure dictum est, esse haec symptomata in genere
actionis loesae,’ ibidem, fol. 2r, italics are mine.
18
Early Modern physicians are generally believed to be extramissionist, see Lindberg, Theories of
Vision (1976), 175. My research, however, revealed that the direction of radiation was not taken for
granted, and constituted a real point of discussion, see my forthcoming PhD-thesis De emancipatie
van het oog. I am very grateful to Sven Dupré for showing me that among mathematicians, too, the
discussion intromission – extramission was still alive, as he convincingly argues in his forthcoming
article ‘Optics without hypotheses’.
19
That visual spirits are responsible for diminished vision is clearly expressed in Capivaccio, Opera
(1603), 585.
20
In Galenic medicine they were called the six non-naturals.
21
For a clear and concise exposition of Early Modern physiological thought, see Siraisi, Medieval
and Early Renaissance Medicine (1990), 78-114.
22
‘Primum scire necessarium est, quod vitae genus debeant sequi aegri,’ Mercurialis, Tractatus
(1590), fol. 6r.
23
For Mercurialis’ therapeutic advices in case of diminution of the visual faculty, see ibidem, fol. 6r-
8r.
24
‘Quod oculi non possint curari sine capite, neque caput, sine curatione totius corporis,’ ibidem,
fol. 5v.
25
‘Cum igitur nihil habeatur traditum de perspicillis, ero excusatione dignus, si in reddendis causis
non ita satisfaciam,’ ibidem, fol. 5v.
26
‘Ut spiritus in principio exitus etiam sint tenues,’ ibidem, fol. 5v.
27
Resp. ‘ex natura ipsius vitri’ and ‘scatet poris, & meatibus angustissimis,’ ibidem, fol. 5v.
28
‘Igitur ocularia in illis, qui remota intuentur, id praestant, ut etiam spiritus in principio attenuen-
tur, quia sic per angustissimos meatus penetrantes, extenuantur,’ ibidem, fol. 5v.
29
‘Ocularibus ad oculi formam cauis uti, & circumferentia densioribus, quo spiritus in centrum,
tamquam pupillam cogantur, & consertim prodeant,’ Forestus, Observationum (1602), 108.
‘Quoniam species visibilies ex literarum singulis elementis crassiores redduntur,’ ibidem, 109.
30
‘hac ratione, qui perspicilla faciunt pro istis, id student, ut faciant paulo concaviora, & lucidiora,’
31
Treatises by oculists
So far I have focused on ‘learned’ medicine and therapy. Yet there is more to
say about eyeglasses and medicine. In the Early Modern period, the medical
sector was far from homogeneous. Besides academically trained physicians,
there were many other groups who took care of patients and who had some-
thing to say about therapy, not only medical professionals, but also laymen
and –women. In the case of the eye, there was a special group of so-called
‘oculists.’ In theory, their task was limited to the very delicate and risky opera-
tion of ‘couching cataracts. In practice, however, some oculists appeared to be
much more ambitious and tried to present themselves as real doctors of the
32
‘Nam resarcitur externi crystalli fulgore quod interno deest,’ Heurnius, De morbis oculorum
(1608), 7.
33
The comparison between the crystalline humour and eyeglasses was typical for anatomical dis-
course (see below).
34
‘At immodico splendore iuniores offenduntur, cum internus satis illis sit,’ ibidem, 7.
35
As was the case for Georg Bartisch, for instance.
Treatises on anatomy
I have focused on therapy because that is the place where eyeglasses seem most
relevant – and eventually would become so –, even if, paradoxically, it is pre-
cisely the place where the introduction at first appeared most problematic. Yet
there was another type of medical discourse about eyeglasses, namely anatomi-
cal treatises. Ever since the famous anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
had suggested that the crystalline humour was working as a kind of ‘specil-
lorum,’ eyeglasses would be adduced to explain the working of the crystalline
humour.37
In anatomical treatises, physicians adopted a different approach to eyeglass-
es. They were considered not so much in relation to the diseased body with its
spirits and its internal light, but directly to the image. In doing so, they were
much closer to opticians. With the rise of functional anatomy at the end of the
sixteenth century, then, that interest in the function of the crystalline humour,
led to an active interest in the working of eyeglasses, which were considered
to be like an external crystalline humour.38 In order to know more about its
working, they looked at what opticians, who had a longer tradition of studying
the properties of glasses and lenses, had said. I therefore believe that anatomists
formed an essential chain in the circulation of knowledge between opticians
and physicians. This is not to say that the integration of optical concepts in an-
atomical tracts went very smoothly. Anatomists, too, were struggling with the
concepts in order to accommodate them to their medical ‘modus visionis,’ but
at least they did not have to make a direct link with pathology or therapy.39
36
On oculists and eyeglasses, see Vanagt, ‘Brillen’ (2006), 30-32 and idem, ‘Early Modern Medical
Thinking on the Vision and the Camera Obscura (forthcoming).
37
Vesalius, Fabrica (1543), 646.
38
On the importance of functions and the development towards a more philosophical approach
in post-Vesalian anatomy, see French, Dissection (1999); Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance
(1997); Cunningham, ‘Fabricius’ (1985), 195-206.
39
On the importance of anatomy for the integration of eyeglasses within medical discourse, see
Vanagt, ‘Brillen’ (2006), 34-39.
Introduction
In 1608 Dutch spectacle-makers invented a telescope by combining a con-
vex and a concave spectacle-lens. Albert Van Helden’s classic The Invention
of the Telescope has considered the patent application of a spectacle-maker of
Middelburg, Hans Lipperhey, to the States General in The Hague in September
1608 as the beginning of the history of the telescope.1 There had however been
numerous reports of alleged telescopic practice for several centuries. Eileen
Reeves has recently shown that in many of these stories the projected instru-
ment is a sort of telescopic mirror, and thus of an optical design significantly
different from the Dutch telescope (and for that matter, other early seven-
teenth-century telescopes) which was made of lenses only.2 The Pharos, the
lighthouse in ancient Alexandria, on top of which an enormous mirror was
positioned, enabling one to see the enemy’s ships from far away (and to set
them on fire), is perhaps the most familiar incarnation of legendary telescopic
catoptrics. Although available in Latin only since 1575, Reeves has shown that
it was preceded by various medieval versions of the same device. Moreover,
projected telescopic catoptrics had a continued existence in the later sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, even after the Dutch telescope had already
appeared on the scene. Among these circulating stories of legendary telescopic
catoptrics the claims made by the sixteenth-century English mathematicians
Thomas Digges and William Bourne stand out, foremost because they (and
especially Bourne, as we will soon learn) were incomparably more precise
about the optical design of their telescope. The instrument is first mentioned
1
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 20-25. On the inventor of the Dutch telescope, see also Zuidervaart,
this volume, and idem, ‘‘Uit Vaderlandsliefde’’ (2008), 5-58.
2
Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks (2008), 15-46.
For to see any smal thing a great distance of from you, it requireth the ayde of two
glasses, and one glasse must be made of purpose, and it may be made in such sort, that
you may see a small thing a great distance of, as this, to reade a letter that is set open
neare a quarter of a myle from you, and also to see a man foure or five miles from you,
or to view a Towne or Castell, or to see any window or such like thing sixe or seaven
myles from you. And to declare what manner of glasses that these must be …4
3
Digges, Pantometria (1571), Aiiiv.
4
Bourne, Inventions or Devices (1578), 96.
5
Ronan, ‘Origins’ (1991); Ronan, ‘Elizabethan Telescope’ (1993); Rienitz, ‘‘Make Glasses to See the
Moon Large’’ (1993); Rienitz, Historisch-Physikalische Entwicklungslinien (1999), 66-132; Whitaker,
‘Digges-Bourne telescope’ (1993). See also Ronan’s appearance in Patrick Moore’s The Sky at Night
program on BBC-1, 2 April 1992.
6
Bourne to Burghley [MS Lansdowne 121]; citations taken from the edition in Van Helden,
Invention (1977), 30-34.
7
In other words, the reconstructed ‘Elizabethan telescope’ is not a reflecting telescope. For the his-
tory of the reflecting telescope, see Ariotti, ‘Cavalieri’ (1975); Turner, ‘Prehistory’ (1984).
8
Digges, Pantometria (1571), Aiiiv.
9
On the dispersal of the Dutch telescope, see Van Helden, Invention (1977), 25-26; Sluiter, ‘The
Telescope before Galileo’ (1997). See also Sluiter, ‘The First Known Telescopes’ (1997).
10
Digges, Pantometria (1571), Giv-Giir. For this interpretation, see Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks
(2008), 62.
11
Bourne, Inventions or Devices (1578), 96.
But if you wish for the images to appear upright, this will be a great feat, attempted by
many but not discovered by anyone until now. Some place flat mirrors at an oblique
angle near the hole, which reflect an image onto the screen opposite that is more or
less upright but dark and confused. We, by placing the white screen at an oblique
angle to the hole, and looking towards the part facing the hole, saw the images almost
erect but the pyramid cut obliquely showed the men without any proportion and
confusedly. But in the following way you will have what you desire. Place an eyeglass
made from a convex lens in front of the hole. From here the image falls on the con-
cave mirror. Place the concave mirror far from the centre so that the images which it
12
‘And for that yf the glasse bee very thicke, then yt will hynder the sighte. Therefore yt must bee
not above a quarter of an ynche in thickness: and the sydes or edges very thynne, and so polysshed
or cleared.’ Bourne to Burghley [MS Lansdowne 121], in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 33.
13
Von Rohr, ‘Geschichte der Brille’ (1937), 41.
14
Bourne, Inventions or Devices (1578), 96.
15
Ibidem, 96.
16
Gorman, ‘Art, Optics and History’ (2003).
Della Porta did not specify the proportion of the focal lengths of the mir-
ror and the lens, but when the focal length of the lens would have been longer
than the focal length of the mirror, and the focal point of the mirror placed a
short distance outside the focal point of the lens, the projected image is mag-
nified, upright and not left-right reversed. The image obtained in this type
of camera obscura was then perfectly suitable for those interested in visual
representation.
That the interest in optics arose in a context of visual representation is also
suggested in the case of Digges (but one should add, absent in Bourne’s multiple
references to a telescope). The complete title of one of Digges’ works in which
he referred to the telescope was A Geometrical Practise, named Pantometria
divided into three Bookes, Longimetra, Planimetra and Stereometria, containing
Rules manifolde for mensuration all lines, Superficies and Solides: with sundry
straunge conclusions both by instrument and without, and also by Perspective
glasses, to set forth the true description or exact plat of an whole Region. Digges’
edition of his father’s work was thus a book on surveying. As to the ‘perspec-
tive glasses,’ Digges explicitly claimed them be useful for the representation of
cities, but also for the representation of any details thereof, such as individual
buildings.
Marveylouse are the conclusions that may be perfourmed by glasses concave and con-
vex of circulare and parabolicall fourmes, using for multiplication of beames some-
time the ayde of glasses transparent, which by fraction should unite or dissipate the
images or figures presented by the reflection of other. By these kinde of glasses or
rather frames of them, placed in due angles, ye may not only set out the proportion of
an whole region, yea represent before your eye the lively image of every towne, village,
&c. and that in as little or great space or place as ye will prescribe, but also augment
17
Della Porta, Magia naturalis (1589), 589, in the translation of Gorman, ‘Art, Optics, and History’
(2003), 297-298. For the use of a plane mirror inside a camera obscura, to which Della Porta
referred, see Benedetti, Diversarum speculationum (1585), 270-271; Danti, La prospettiva (1573),
81-84.
18
Digges, Pantometria (1571), Giv-Giir.
19
Turner, ‘There Was No Elizabethan Telescope’ (1993), 5.
20
On William Bourne, see Turner, ‘Bourne’ (2004). See also the introduction in Taylor, Regiment of
the Sea (1963), xiii-xxxv; Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners (1954), 33-39; Taylor, Tudor Geography
(1930), 155-156; Taylor, The Haven-Finding Art (1956), 192-214; Bawlf, The Secret Voyage (2003),
68-73, 309-311.
And allso aboute seaven yeares passed, uppon occasyon of a certayne written Booke of
myne, which I delivered your honour, Wherin was set downe the nature and qualitye
of water: As tuchinge ye sinckinge or swymminge of thinges. In sort youre Honoure
had some speeche with mee, as touching measuring the moulde of a shipp. Whiche
gave mee occasyon, to wryte a little Boke of Statick. Whiche Booke since that tyme,
hath beene profitable, and helpped the capacityes, both of some sea men, and allso
ship carpenters. Therfore, I have now written this simple, and breefe note of the ef-
fects, and qualityes of glasses, according unto the several formes, facyons, and makings
of them …22
This ‘certayne written Booke of myne, which I delivered your honour’ was
a manuscript, dedicated to Lord Burghley, that contained two works Art of
Shooting in Great Ordinance and Treasure for Travellers – both of which were
published in 1578 – before an editorial decision was made to split them
up.23 As on the one hand Burghley was addressed as ‘Lorde Highe Treasurer
of Engelande,’ a title he was awarded in the summer of 1572, and on the
other, Bourne had announced these two works as ready for publication in
his Regiment for the Sea (1574), the manuscript must have been written in
21
Bourne to Burghley [MS Lansdowne 121], in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 31.
22
Ibidem.
23
British Library (London), MS Sloane 3651. My appreciation of the dating of William Bourne’s
manuscripts is fully based on Stephen Johnston’s unpublished and revised (with respect to Taylor’s) bib-
liography of William Bourne. See http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/staff/saj/bourne [accessed 12 Sep 2005].
Compare the bibliography of Bourne in Taylor, Regiment (1963), 439-459.
24
Ibidem, 278.
25
Johnston, Revised Bibliography (ref. 23). This dating differs significantly from Van Helden’s
(c. 1585) and Turner’s (c. 1572). Compare Van Helden, Invention (1977), 30; Turner, ‘Bourne’
(2004).
26
Bodleian Library (Oxford), MS Ashmole 1148, 79-102.
27
Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (private collection, University of Pennsylvania), ljs345.
28
A recent biography of Burghley is Alford, Burghley, which is excellent, but unfortunately, does
not cover Burghley’s role in the Privy Council and his patronage of natural knowledge projects.
For Burghley’s economic patronage, see Heal and Holmes, ‘Economic Patronage’ (2002). See also
Graves, William Cecil (1998), 149-168.
29
Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science and Patronage’ (2004), 157-160.
30
Godfrey, English Glassmaking (1975), 16-37. See also Charleston, English Glass (1984), 42-108;
Thorpe, English Glass (1949), 86-113.
For that there ys dyvers in this Lande, that can say and dothe knowe much more, in
these causes, then I: and especially Mr. Dee, and allso Mr. Thomas Digges, for that
by theyre Learninge, they have reade and seene moo [sic] auctors in those causes: And
allso, theyre ability ys suche, that they may the better mayntayne the charges: And also
they have more leysure and better tyme to practyze those matters.32
31
Harkness, The Jewel House (2007), 142-180.
32
Bourne to Burghley [MS Lansdowne 121], in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 34.
33
In his Mathematicall Praeface (1570) John Dee included ‘perspective’ among the mathematical
arts. Dee also announced a promise of a telescope not yet fully fulfilled when he wrote that the mili-
tary man ‘may wonderfully helpe him selfe, by perspective Glasses. In which, (I trust) our posterity
will prove more skillfull and expert, and to greater purposes, then in these days, can (almost) be
credited to be possible.’ See Dee, Elements, b.j.r.
And then this glasse, the property of yt ys, to make all thinges which are seen in yt to
seem muche bigger then yt ys to the syghte of the Eye, and at some appoynted dis-
tance, from the glasse, accordinge to the forme of the hollowness, the thinge will seem
at the biggest, and so yow standinge nearer the thinge will seeme less, unto the sighte
of the eye: so that, accordinge unto the forme of the concavity or hollowness, and at
some appointed distance from hym that looketh into the glasse, And yf that the glasse
were a yearde broade, the beame that shoulde come unto his eye, shall showe his face
as broade, as the whole Glasse.36
34
Dupré, ‘Ausonio’s Mirrors and Galileo’s Lenses’ (2005), 160-170.
35
On the differences between Ausonio and Bourne, see Dupré, ‘The Making of Practical Optics’
(2009).
36
Bourne to Burghley [MS Lansdowne 121], in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 32.
And yf that yow doo beholde any thinge thorowe this Glasse, and sette the glasse furder
from yowe then the burning beame, and so extendinge after that what distance that yow
list, all suche thinges, that yow doo see or beholde, thoroughe the glasse, the toppes ys
turned downwardes.37
The quality of this Glass, ys, if that the sunne beames do pearce through yt, at a cer-
tayne quantity of distance, and that yt will burne any thinge, that ys apte for to take
fyer: And this burnynge beame, ys somewhat furder from the glasse, then the perspec-
tive beame.38
The ‘perspective beame’ locates the point where the eye is to be placed in
order to perceive the largest possible image, one that fills the entire diameter of
the lens before the image collapses when the eye is then placed at the point of
combustion of the convex lens.
The quality of the Glasse, (that ys made as before ys rehearsed) ys, that in the behold-
ing any thinge thorowe the glasse, yow standinge neare unto the Glasse, yt will seeme
thorow the glasse to bee but little bigger, then the proportions ys of yt: But as yow
do stande further, and further from yt, so shall the perspective beame, that commeth
through ye glasse, make the thinge to seeme bigger and bigger, untill such tyme, that
the thinge shall seeme of a marvellous bignes: Whereby that these sortes of glasses
shall much proffet them, that desyer to beholde those things that ys of great distance
from them. … And allso standing further from the glasse yow shall discerne nothing
37
Ibidem, 33.
38
Ibidem, 33.
The knowledge of these optical components did not give Bourne a blue-
print for a telescope, but given the magnifying properties of concave mirrors
and convex lenses, he was convinced that the effect would be additive if a
concave mirror and a convex lens were combined.
And so reseaved from one glasse into another, beeyinge so placed at such a distance,
that every glasse dothe make his largest beame. And so yt ys possible that yt may bee
helpped and furdered the one glass with the other, as the concave lookinge glasse
with the other grounde and polysshed glasse. That yt ys likely yt ys true to see a small
thinge, of very greate distance.40
39
Ibidem, 33.
40
Ibidem, 34.
41
Bourne, Inventions or Devices (1578), 96.
peculiar problem for craftsmen. This concept made a lens of a large diameter
an essential characteristic of his telescope design, and contemporary lens-mak-
ers experienced problems with making lenses of such large diameters. When
Bourne wrote his letter to Burghley, England still depended upon import
from the Continent for its supply of mirrors and lenses.42 During the reign
of Elizabeth I, Venetian cristallo mirrors were imported in increasing num-
bers from Venice, Antwerp and Rouen.43 Around 1570 imported flat mirrors
came in standard sizes, the largest not exceeding 20-25 centimeters. Likewise,
spectacle-lenses (of a typical diameter of c. 3 centimeters) were imported in
large numbers from spectacle-making centres in Germany, Normandy, and
Flanders.44 Thus, the size for the lens mentioned by Bourne – 30 to 40 centi-
meters – did not fall within the standard range. Moreover, this problem was
not peculiar to Elizabethan England. If Bourne had suggested this design in
Middelburg, we can be certain that he would have encountered the same prob-
lems. To obtain the optical quality desirable for telescope lenses pieces of mirror
glass were used in the early seventeenth century.45 But even more importantly,
42
A network of people and goods of cristallo glass, linking Italy (Venice), Antwerp, Middelburg and
London, was created during the second half of the sixteenth century. For a recent overview of this
network, see Veeckman et al., Majolica and Glass (2002).
43
Godfrey, English Glassmaking (1975), 235-241. On how these changes in mirror-making prac-
tices influenced English literature, see Kalas, ‘The Technology of Reflection’ (2002).
44
Godfrey, English Glassmaking (1975), 241-243. On the import of spectacles and spectacle-makers
from Flanders, see Rhodes, ‘A Pair’ (1982); Dreyfus, ‘The Invention of Spectacles’ (1988), 101;
Stevenson, ‘A New Type’ (1995).
45
Willach, ‘Lens Grinding and Polishing Techniques’ (2001), 14.
Conclusion
It should be obvious from my argument that we should not attribute the in-
vention of an ‘Elizabethan telescope’ to Bourne. The material constructions
of Ronan and others in the 1990s belie the historical texts on which those
reconstructions were based. But then, how does Bourne’s ‘invention’ help us
re-write the history of the invention of the telescope and of the events leading
up to Middelburg in 1608? If it was not an ‘Elizabethan telescope,’ then what
was it that Bourne invented? Was it a telescope? If circulation is important to
invention, then Bourne failed to invent a telescope. His telescope design did
not circulate beyond that one letter in which he requested Burghley’s patron-
age for it – one among the many letters from projectors Burghley received. The
material ‘reconstructions’ of the 1990s are also misleading in the sense that
they wrongly suggest that Bourne’s project moved beyond the stage of paper. If
Bourne can be said to have invented something, this invention was a telescope
design on paper on which he speculated that it would work.
However, Bourne’s speculations were based on sound knowledge. I have
shown that Bourne’s telescope design was based on shared optical knowledge,
however, expressed in Bourne’s letter in idiosyncratic terminology because
Bourne was not familiar with the optical tradition. Therefore, it is most like-
ly that he himself did not realize that his optical knowledge was innovative
with respect to the optical tradition. More importantly in this context, I have
stressed that Bourne’s knowledge was practical, but not material. Bourne’s
knowledge was different from craft knowledge on how to make lenses, mir-
rors or telescopes. Although the body of shared optical knowledge on which
Bourne based his telescopic speculations was sound, it also contained one
mistake that was crucial for Bourne’s concept of magnification. As we have
46
Ibidem, 14-15. For the importance of the diaphragm, see Dupré, ‘Galileo’s Telescope’ (2003).
Introduction
It is pretty much axiomatic by now that, in his compendious, seven-part Kitab
al-Manazir, or ‘Book of Optics,’ Ibn al-Haytham revolutionized the science of
optics and, in the process, laid the foundations for modern theory. Just how
iconic Ibn al-Haytham has become in the historiography of optics is evident
from this brief excerpt cobbled together from the current biographical sketch
in Wikipedia:
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the ‘father of modern optics’ for his influential Book of
Optics, which correctly explained and proved [my emphasis] the modern intromission
theory of vision, and for his experiments on... lenses, mirrors, refraction, reflection,
and the dispersion of light into its constituent colours... Considered the... originator
of experimental science and experimental physics... Ibn al-Haytham... argued that
rays of light are streams of corpuscular energy particles travelling in straight lines.
[He] discovered [Pierre de] Fermat’s principle of least time... and [he]... discovered a
result similar to [Willibrord] Snell’s law of sines... [he also] laid the foundations for
the later development of telescopic astronomy, as well as for the microscope and the
use of optical aids in Renaissance art.1
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham.
2
The core of the Perspectivist tradition consists of Roger Bacon’s De multiplicatione specierum
(c. 1262) and Perspectiva (c. 1267), Witelo’s Perspectiva (c. 1275), and John Pecham’s Perspectiva
communis (c. 1280). For the standard account of the development of the Perspectivist tradition from
the late thirteenth to the sixteenth century, see Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler
(1976).
3
Risner, Opticae Thesaurus (1572). Friedrich Risner was responsible for popularizing the Latin form
‘Alhazen’ of Ibn al-Haytham’s given name (al-Hasan), but that form occurs in none of the extant
medieval manuscripts, the overwhelming majority of which give the rendering ‘Alhacen’.
4
A good example of the apparent modernity (and sophistication) of Alhacen’s optical analysis can
be found in his solution of ‘Alhazen’s Problem’ in book 5 of the De aspectibus. For a recent account
of that solution see Smith, ‘Alhacen’s Approach to ‘Alhazen’s Problem’ (2008).
5
See esp. Lindberg, Theories of Vision, 208, where he describes Kepler’s theory of retinal imaging as
follows: ‘Kepler presented a new solution (but not a new kind of solution) to a medieval problem,
defined some six hundred years earlier by Alhazen. By taking the medieval tradition seriously, by ac-
cepting its most basic assumptions but insisting upon more rigor and consistency than the medieval
perspectivists themselves had been able to achieve, he was able to perfect it’.
6
Kepler, Ad Vitellionem (1604). All citations to this work will be from the recent English translation
by Donahue, Johannes Kepler, Optics (2000).
7
The analysis that follows is based primarily upon propositions 8-14 of chapter 5 of the Paralipomena
in Donahue, Kepler, Optics, 196-205.
8
For Ptolemy’s tabulations for refraction from air to water, see Smith, Ptolemy’s Theory of Visual
Perception (1996), 233. For Witelo’s equivalent tabulations, see Perspectiva, 10, prop. 8, in Risner,
Opticae Thesaurus, 412. The raw numbers given in the analysis, which come directly from Witelo,
are actually adjusted slightly by Kepler according to his rule of refraction in chapter 4; see Donahue,
Kepler, Optics, 110-129. The adjustments, however, are so slight that I have chosen to use Witelo’s
raw values for the sake of clarity and convenience.
9
Donahue, Kepler, Optics, 207.
10
Ibidem, 205.
11
Ibidem, 207. Kepler’s conclusion here is based on the assumption that, when light-ray KH in
figure 2 is incident at an angle of 10°, the resulting angle of refraction will be 7° 45’ (according to
Witelo, who unaccountably changes it from the 8° given by Ptolemy), which will leave GF’ slightly
longer than radius ZG of the sphere. Accordingly, since all the neighboring rays between KH and
the axis will intersect the axis at points very near F', distance FG between the edge of the sphere
and the very last possible intersection F cannot be much more than the radius of the sphere; see esp.
Donahue, Kepler, Optics, 204-206.
12
According to the modern thick lens formula, the focal length f of a water-filled sphere of radius r
is contingent on the index of refraction n and is found according to the equation 1/f = (n – 1)[2/r –
2r(n – 1)/nr2]. If we assume an index of refraction for water of n = 1.33 and insert that value in the
equation, we end up with 1/f = 1/2r, so f = 2r, which is the distance of the focal point from the centre
of curvature. Hence the distance of the focal point from the back edge of the sphere is precisely one
radius. In fact, since part of the refraction measured by Kepler is through the glass wall of the flask
containing the water, f will be slightly less than one radius, the amount of divergence dependent on
the thickness of the glass wall.
X
30° 0° A H
B
X1 60°
C
90° D Z Z
X2
X2 '
X1 ' Q' Q'
X'
P'
E'
F'
Q
F
P
Ill. 1 Ill. 2
figure 1
the apparent position and size of celestial bodies.13 For that reason he does deal
figure 2
with refraction through convex spherical interfaces because the boundary be-
tween the heavens and the denser atmosphere below takes that form. He also
deals generally, and qualitatively, with the apparent magnification or diminu-
tion of objects seen through convex spherical interfaces. Nowhere, however,
does he attempt to quantify the resulting magnification or diminution, and
nowhere do focal points enter his analysis, either explicitly or implicitly. In
short, nothing in his refraction-analysis in book 7 of the De aspectibus has an
evident bearing on lenses and their workings. I say ‘evident bearing’ because,
13
The topical organization of book 7 is as follows: chapter one gives a brief outline of the agenda for
the book; chapter two describes how to confirm the basic rules of refraction experimentally on the
basis of refraction from air to water, air to glass, glass to air, and glass to water; chapter three gives a
method for determining the angles of refraction experimentally on the basis of the three media given
in chapter two; chapters four and five deal with image-location in refraction when an object lies in a
denser or a rarer medium than the centre of sight; chapter six explains how objects are seen through
refractive interfaces and ends by showing that all vision occurs by means of refraction through the
transparent tunics of the eye; and chapter seven starts with a general analysis of image-distortion
in refraction, the primary ones being image-dislocation and apparent magnification or diminution,
and then culminates with an analysis of how these distortions can be caused by atmospheric refrac-
tion and how they affect celestial observation. Accordingly, almost all of book 7 constitutes a stage-
setting for the second and final portion of chapter seven.
14
Rashed, Géométrie et dioptrique au Xe siecle (1993); see pp. xlii-lx for Rashed’s analysis of Alhacen
and 84-132 for the original Arabic texts (with French translations) upon which that analysis is
based.
15
Since my critical edition of book 7 will not be published before mid-2010 at the earliest, I will rely
on Risner’s edition of the De aspectibus in the Opticae Thesaurus of 1572. This actually makes sense
because Risner’s edition was the source for Kepler’s reading of both Alhacen and Witelo. The relevant
propositions in that edition are 29 and 49 on pp. 262-263 and 277, respectively. Propositions 29
and 43 of Witelo’s Perspectiva are to be found on pp. 430 and 440-441, respectively. The original
text of book 7, in both Arabic and Latin, is segmented into chapters only, so Risner’s imposition of
propositional breaks is arbitrary, as is mine. Witelo, on the other hand, actually did segment his text
into the propositional elements that Risner provides in his edition of the Perspectiva.
16
That is, propositions 29 in Risner’s edition of both book 7 of Alhacen’s De aspectibus and book 10
of Witelo’s Perspectiva.
G G
E' E'
X R
H
E
E
Z Z
A'
B D D
B B
figure 3
figures 4a and 4b
point between B and B' on the axis there will be a corresponding point on arc
EE' at which the light from that point between B and B' will be refracted to
A. If, therefore, BB' is taken as an object-line on the axis, the light from all the
points on it will be refracted to centre of sight A from arc EE', and the image
of each such point will lie where the cathetus of incidence, which is axis BGA,
intersects the refracted ray. Since A lies on that axis, and since every refracted
ray converges on A, centre of sight A will be the image-location for all those
points, and in that case, Alhacen claims, they will all be seen by A on the
refractive interface itself.17 The image of object-line BB' will therefore be arc
EE', and if we rotate the entire illustration about axis AZB, as in illustration
4b, the resulting image will form a ring defined by E and E' according to a full
rotation.
17
In his analysis of reflection in book 5 of the De aspectibus, Alhacen claims that, when the image-
location is indefinite—i.e., when it lies neither behind the mirror nor between the mirror and the
centre of sight—it will appear as if it lay on the reflecting surface itself; see Smith, Alhacen on the
Principles of Reflection (2006), 428. By analogy, then, since the image-location in this case is at the
centre of sight, the image will appear to lie on the refracting surface.
L
G G G
E' E'
H
E E E
Z Z Z
K
D D D
B'
B B B
versions of proposition 9, and you will note that it gives only the limiting
refraction-point E and point B of radiation. It does not show E' or B', so there
is no indication of whether B' falls between B and G, as in illustration 6a, or
whether it falls beyond B, as in illustration 6b. The import of this point will
become clear in fairly short order.
Now to proposition 17 of chapter 7.18 The stated purpose of this proposi-
tion is to show that, if centre of sight A in illustration 7a faces a sphere of
glass suspended in air, and if axis ABZD is extended indefinitely through and
beyond the sphere, there is a line-segment on the axis beyond D whose image
will appear as a ring on the sphere’s surface. Assume first that the space beyond
the sphere is filled with glass. Let a ray of light from some point H on the axis
reach point G at angle of incidence HGZ and be refracted to A at angle AGX.
Then let a ray of light from some point L on the axis reach point T at angle of
incidence LTZ and be refracted to A at angle ATY. That both these refractions
18
That is, proposition 49 of Risner’s 1572-edition of book 7 of Alhacen’s De aspectibus and proposi-
tion 43 of his edition of book 10 of Witelo’s Perspectiva.
Y B B
G
G
T T
Z Z
M M
S S
D D
L' L'
H' H'
FC
L L
Ill.7a and 7b H H
is bolstered by the fact that, in the course of his analysis of lenticular focusing,
Kepler actually cites proposition 17, as mediated by Witelo, and he does so
with a proper understanding of its implications.19
There are, however, two significant factors that militate against this con-
clusion. For a start, proposition 17 is not really about radiation from point A
through a sphere. Granted, Alhacen uses such radiation as an analytic device,
but the explicit purpose of the proposition is to explain how and why line H'L'
in illustration 7b forms an annular image on the sphere’s surface. Alhacen in
fact emphasizes this topical focus by suggesting an empirical verification of the
geometrical analysis in the proposition. Posing one eye in front of a moder-
ately large sphere of clear glass or crystal, the reader is to take a ball of black
wax the size of a chick pea, stick it firmly on the point of a long needle, and
then position it directly behind the sphere in line with the axis passing from
the eye through the sphere’s centre. If he places the ball of wax properly on
the axial line, Alhacen concludes, he will see its image as a black ring on the
19
Donahue, Kepler, Optics, 202.
20
See the end of proposition 43 in Risner, Opticae Thesaurus (1572), 277. Witelo describes the same
empirical confirmation at the end of proposition 43 in Ibidem, 441.
21
For the original from which illustration 9 was drawn, see Rashed, Géométrie (1993), 106.
22
Ms CCC 150, folio 109r.
B
B G
T
G
T
U
E Z
Z S M
D B
G
F T
L'
M D
S Z
Q'
L'
H' C H'
V
S M D
Q
L H'
L'
L
F
H H
C L
H
figure 8
figure 10
Nor is this an isolated case; every manuscript of the De aspectibus
figure 9
that has this
illustration –and not all of them do – has it in the form represented in illustra-
tion 10. Furthermore, and more to the point, Witelo recapitulated the illustra-
tion in that form to illustrate his version of proposition 17 in book 10, proposi-
tion 43 of the Perspectiva, and Friedrich Risner used the same faulty diagram for
the two propositions in his 1572 tandem edition of Alhacen’s De aspectibus and
Witelo’s Perspectiva. Small wonder, then, that in failing to grasp the underlying
implications of the proposition, Alhacen’s immediate Perspectivist disciples all
mistakenly supposed that light radiating from a single point through a sphere
will converge at a single point on the other side. Illustration 12, for instance,
shows how John Pecham represents the situation in part 3, proposition 16, of
his Perspectiva communis, X representing the point-source of radiation and H
the convergence of the rays on the other side.23 This supposition remained com-
monplace throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
23
Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics (1970), 231.
B
G
T
SM D
X H'
Q'
L'
H
L
Q S M D
H'
L'
Q'
Ill. 11 Ill. 12
figure 11
figure 12
24
That is, in the earlier analysis based on illustrations 1 and 2. Interestingly enough, the procedure
Kepler follows in that analysis is almost identical to the procedure that Giambattista della Porta fol-
lows in book 2 of his De refractione (1593), yet Kepler claims that, despite his best efforts to obtain
a copy of this work, he was unable to do so (see Donahue, Kepler Optics (2000), 216). On the other
hand, Kepler makes copious references to book 17 of Porta’s Magia naturalis (1589), where Porta
discusses the refraction of light through glass lenses.
25
Note Kepler’s specification of the actual distance at which the central dot of light first appears:
one-tenth the radius (‘the twentieth part of the diameter’); see Donahue, Kepler, Optics, 210. This of
course indicates that Kepler was not only observing the phenomenon but also measuring it.
26
This test with the water-filled flask is described in chapter 5, proposition 19, in Donahue, Kepler,
Optics, 210-211.
27
Illustration 13, illustrating the test with the water-filled flask, is based on the illustration given
by Kepler to accompany proposition 19, and Kepler’s claim that the congregated light generates
enough heat to ignite gunpowder occurs at the end of that proposition; see Donahue, Kepler Optics
(2000), 211.
28
See Rashed, Géométrie (1993), 111-132.
7
f
therefore follows that all parallel radiation through the sphere will refract out
of the sphere to points between V and C.
It can then be demonstrated that CN is less than one-fifth radius CD and,
moreover, that CN1 is considerably less than one-half radius CD, so both are
less than CS. There are also parallel rays striking the sphere at points, such as F,
between B1 and A that will be refracted to points between N and S. But even
if we consider only the parallel rays striking the sphere between B1 and L, it
follows that those rays outnumber the ones striking between B1 and A. This
is clear from the diagram on page 164, which represents a birds-eye view of
the sphere from the perspective of point A. The grey ring is the cross-section
of the area on the sphere struck by all the parallel rays between B1 and L,
and it is considerably larger in area than the cross-section between B1 and A.
figure 13
Consequently, the radiation striking the sphere on its outer edge, which is the
lion’s share of the entire radiation striking the sphere’s surface, will be refracted
to points between S and C, so the focal area of the sphere will lie between S
and C, i.e., within half a radius of the sphere, because that is where most of
the radiation congregates.
At first glance, the similarities between this analysis and Kepler’s analysis
of parallel radiation through a water-filled sphere are striking. Both are based
in one way or another upon theoretical ray-tracing, which in turn is based on
Ptolemy’s tabulations. Both invoke the same refraction-principles, particularly
the principle of reciprocity. And both depend on spherical aberration. But
B1 L' A
L L
D
C
K
X N
N1
S
Ill. 14
the differences are equally, if not more, striking. For one thing, Kepler defines
the focal area specifically according to the outer limit of intersection, whereas
Alhacen defines it generally according to half the distance between that limit
and the edge of the sphere. For another thing, Kepler has the outer limit of
intersection pretty close to where it actually belongs, whereas Alhacen has it
twice too far from its proper location.29 For yet another thing, figure
Kepler14
actually
homes in on the focal area, isolating it to a small region near the outer limit of
intersection, whereas Alhacen defines it vaguely, locating it somewhere within
half the radius of the sphere. And perhaps most telling, Kepler concludes that
the effectively focused radiation comes from a narrow shaft of incident rays
surrounding the sphere’s axis, whereas Alhacen has it coming from the outer
edge of the sphere. Thus, although both Alhacen and Kepler shared precisely
the same analytic principles and followed much the same line of reasoning,
they reached radically different, in some ways diametrically opposed, conclu-
sions about the focal property of their respective transparent spheres. Ironically
enough, moreover, there is no indication whatever that Alhacen attempted to
test his conclusions empirically; his approach, unlike Kepler’s, therefore seems
29
If we take the index of refraction n for glass to be 1.5, then according to the thick lens formula
given in note 12 above, 1/f = 2/3r, so f = 3/2r = 1.5r, which means that the focal point lies precisely
half a radius from the back edge of the sphere.
Conclusion
Let me bring things to a close by raising the question I posed toward the be-
ginning of this paper: How much did Kepler actually owe to Alhacen for his
account of spherical lenses? The answer is ‘not much.’ True, Kepler may have
learned the basic rules of refraction from Alhacen, but they had already been
well established by Ptolemy, from whom Alhacen in fact got them. Likewise,
the ray-analytic approach to optics Kepler may have learned from Alhacen
originated not with Alhacen but with his Greek forebears, Ptolemy in par-
ticular. If, moreover, we descend to particulars, we find absolutely nothing in
Alhacen’s refraction-analysis in the De aspectibus to foreshadow Kepler’s rigor-
ous and sophisticated treatment of parallel rays of light refracted through a
transparent sphere. At only one point in the entire De aspectibus – book 7,
chapter 7, proposition 17 – does Alhacen actually deal with radiation through
a transparent sphere, and in that case the implications for lens-theory are fairly
deeply buried, even in the Arabic version with the correct accompanying illus-
tration. In the Latin version, upon which Kepler and his scholastic predeces-
sors depended, the illustration is so grossly misleading that those implications
are buried almost beyond recovery.
In short, Kepler’s analysis of spherical lenses and their focal property seems
to have been more or less autonomous. This is not to say that Kepler owed noth-
ing to Alhacen. For instance, Kepler may well have borrowed from Alhacen
the technique of imagining the space behind the sphere filled with the same
medium, following the light-rays through it to the axis, then imagining the
sphere suspended in air, and following the same rays after refraction through
the sphere. But the truly creative (one might say modern) elements of Kepler’s
analysis – the theoretical and empirical ray-tracing, the isolation of the narrow
beam of incoming rays brought to effective focus, the virtual pinpointing of
the focus itself – certainly did not come from Alhacen’s refraction-analysis in
the De aspectibus. If, therefore, Kepler’s account of spherical lenses and their
focal property marks the birth of modern lens-theory and, by extension, of
modern optics, then surely Kepler, not Alhacen, has the legitimate claim to
paternity.
Introduction
In November 1608, the Venetian friar and inveterate newsmonger Paolo Sarpi
received two reports of splendid new optical devices. One account, the sober
story of a discovery made by Hans Lipperhey, a god-fearing lens-maker resi-
dent in Middelburg, appeared as a stop-press item in a newsletter otherwise
concerned with an ambassadorial visit to the United Provinces from Siam,
and it is justifiably famous among historians of science today.1 The second
tale concerned a speculum constellatum or ‘starry mirror’ deployed in Paris by
Father Pierre Coton (ill. 1), the influential confessor of Henri IV, to spy on
rulers throughout Europe, and it was surely the least volatile allegation in a
pamphlet devoted, in the main, to the feasting, dancing, drinking, carousing,
cross-dressing, and weapon-hoarding members of two Jesuit houses in Austria.
Eager to read all manner of news, and yet sceptical of most, Sarpi repeat-
edly expressed doubts about both reports of telescopic activities, replying to
a number of correspondents that he himself had attempted something of the
sort decades earlier, that he would have to see it to believe it, and that rumour
tended to magnify things en route.
More crucially, from my viewpoint, Sarpi seems privately to have assumed
that the two stories referred to the same object, and that the telescopic effect
was due to some combination of a lens and a mirror. As I have argued else-
where, he passed on such impressions to Galileo Galilei in the fall of 1608,
and because Galileo, too, was familiar with lens-mirror combinations, they
both attempted to obtain more information about the ‘starry mirror’ from
Jacques Badovere, a former student then resident in Paris.2 Pertinent details, or
perhaps the Dutch instrument itself, arrived in the Veneto only in late spring
of 1609 via a courier, and Galileo was able to present an improved version of
1
Ambassades du Roy de Siam (1608); Zoomers & Zuidervaart, Embassies of the King of Siam (2008).
2
Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks (2008), 81-166.
Legendary forerunners
The story of the recent invention from The Hague had a certain currency, for the
news and various versions of the instrument itself were disseminated throughout
the Netherlands, France, England, Spain, Germany, and Italy within months of
the discovery. But the tale of the starry mirror hardly vanished, even or rather
especially when no such device circulated along with it. The business about the
mirrors was kept alive because of the cultural expectations it met, and those ex-
pectations are what I would like to address in this essay.
The shelf-life of the mirror as a progenitor of the telescope was a fairly short
one: within several decades those doubtful about the novelty of the Dutch in-
strument usually referred to alleged precedents distinguished by their tubular
shape. In 1627, for instance, the Flemish scholar Libert Froidmont described
a corroded artefact of cylindrical contours that would seem to predate the
instrument from The Hague: ‘Lately in Hainault it is said that they found,
among the old furnishings of a certain castle, a dioptrical tube, very rusty and
of great age.’4 Drawing on an ambiguous term for the telescope, dioptricus
tubus, which meant perhaps nothing more than a cylinder through which one
looked, Froidmont made no mention of the lenses, and his silence is typical.
In 1632 in his Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo mocked
a certain man who had concluded, on the basis of Aristotle’s suggestion that
individuals peering through tubes or observing from the bottom of a cistern
could see stars even by day, that the Dutch device derived from the ancient
philosopher, and that vaporous air in the well served as the source for the
‘invention of glass lenses.’5 Two influential Jesuit scholars, writing in 1619
and 1640, alluded to an image in an illuminated manuscript in a Benedictine
monastery in Bavaria showing an ancient astronomer pointing a cylinder of
some sort at the heavens.6 The device in question was a sighting tube, and as in
the instances of the Flemish artefact and the Aristotelian cistern, the apparent
3
De l’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, 10 (1888), 120, 125-126.
4
Froidmont, Meteorologicorum (1626), 112.
5
Galilei, Dialogo, in: Galilei, Opere, 7 (1897), 135.
6
Cysatus, Mathemata (1619), 76 and Borri, Collecta (1631), 135.
7
Eisler, ‘The Polar Sighting Tube’ (1949); Michel, ‘Les tubes optiques’ (1954) and Lewis, Surveying
Instruments (2001), 36-108.
8
Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks (2008), 15-46.
9
Favaro, Carteggio Inedito (1886), 320.
10
Van Helden, Invention of the Telescope (1977), 46-47.
doge and to the most elderly members of the Senate from the highest towers
of the city in August 1609 to observe ships at two hours’ distance from the
port, it seems safe to say that the familiar story of the Roman mirror – the icon
of imperial ambitions, maritime power, and the prerogatives of an oligarchy
– served as a template for this account.11 Similarly, some readers of the newslet-
ter that first mentioned the Dutch telescope, the Ambassades du Roy de Siam,
must have wondered if the story from The Hague were a garbled version of
the still current tale of the exotic Oriental potentate Prester John, as if Hans
Lipperhey, more crafty than craftsman, had simply appropriated one of the
gifts just then arriving from the Far East.
Consider in this connection Thomas Tomkis’ Albumazar, a play of 1614,
generally agreed to be a record of the first appearance of the Dutch telescope
on the English stage. This is not to suggest that Tomkis himself, who had men-
tioned the perspective glass in a play of 1607, and who was in Paris in 1609
when the new invention became commercially available, actually believed ei-
ther in an Eastern origin for the Dutch telescope, or in its incorporation of a
11
Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 253-254 and Favaro, ‘Galileo Galilei e la presentazione’ (1891).
In this reading, the new listening instrument, and perhaps the newish tele-
scope from which it derives, is merely an amplification of an utterance origi-
nating long before with Prester John.
12
Tomkis, Lingua (1607), fol. B4; Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician (2006), 145-146 and Casaubon,
Epistolae, 339.
13
Ilardi, Renaissance Vision (2007), 78-79, 91-92, 95, 100-102, 160, 224-229, 232.
14
Tomkis, Albumazar (1615; ed. 1944), 80-81, 141-142, and Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius, 37.
15
On the historical personage, see: David Pingree, ‘Abu Ma‘shar’, in: Dictionary of Scientific Biography,
1 (2008), 32-39.
16
Michel, ‘Les tubes optiques’ (1954), 178 and illustration 3.
17
Tomkis, Albumazar (1615; ed. 1944), 82.
18
Desplanque [et al], Inventaire sommaire, 5 (1885), 371.
19
Desplanque [et al], Inventaire sommaire, 8 (1885), 379, and 6 (1885), 50. See about the Staës
telescope also Zuidervaart, elsewhere in this volume, note 25.
20
Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 270; on the date of the shopping list, see: Strano, ‘La Lista della spesa
di Galileo’ (2009); on the German lens-making and mirror-making industry, see: Ilardi, Renaissance
Vision (2005), 143-146, 184; on innovations among lens-makers in Nuremberg, see: Willach, The
Long Route (2008), 70-84.
21
Desplanque [et al], Inventaire sommaire, 6 (1885), 70.
22
On these terms see: Rosen, The Naming (1947), 72-73; Vatican Library, Fondo Urb. Lat. 1077,
Avvisi Manoscritti, fol. 437r; Grillo, Delle lettere, 2 (1616), 305; Duplessis-Mornay, Mémoires, 11
(1824/5), 375, 431.
23
Satow, The Voyage of Captain John Saris (1900), 91, 11, 159. On this and other exchanges, see:
Screech, ‘Pictures’ (2005).
24
See: Screech, ‘Pictures’ (2005), 68, and Farrington, The English Factory, 1 (1991), 534-535, 552;
2 (1991), 1291, 1364, 1370.
25
Bornitz, Tractatus (1625), 142.
26
Ibidem, 168.
27
Dupré, ‘Mathematical Instruments’ (2000) and Dupré, ‘Ausonio’s Mirrors’ (2005), 145-180.
28
Favaro, Carteggio inedito (1886), 248-250, 254-256, 438-440.
29
Favaro, Carteggio inedito (1886), 449-450. On the Archduke’s telescope, see: Sluiter, ‘The
Telescope before Galileo’; on the kinship of Spinola and the Count of Arembourg, see: Purnell,
Report on the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Downshire, 2 (1937), 95-96.
30
Watson, Stargazer (2004), 110-112.
1. Making an instrument that allows a man to walk in the sea and underwater.
Some Dutch peasants are said to be versed in this art, such that they light
fire and sing beneath the surface…
2. Making a bridge beneath palisades and pilings.
3. Making marvellous mirrors; see Giambattista della Porta’s Catoptrics.
4. Conjuring up by means of such mirrors a vast army, and reducing men to ter-
ror. This would be something to use against the Turks, if they are susceptible
to terror…
5. [Making] other mirrors, in which very distant things seem near by. With
this technique we can read the smallest letters, and see stars that are other-
wise hidden, as through a Dutch telescope, by which means some people
think they have seen the satellites of Jupiter, and spots in the sun. They can
make other mirrors in which nearby objects seem remote. Julius Caesar
was said to have seen events in Britain with enormous mirrors, if one can
believe it.
6. [Making] other mirrors in which [an object’s] quantity and location are
altered.
7. [Making] mirrors to manifest things hidden in crevices or traps, as [Albertus
Magnus] says Socrates did with the dragon…31
What is striking about this list, of course, is that it conflates a certain amount
of medieval lore with very recent developments, and that it insists on the dubi-
ety and on the relatedness of all such claims. It also suggests, with some degree
of accuracy, that those who were the alleged inventors or potential consum-
ers of one technological venture might well be connected with another one.
Consider in this connection the reference to the ‘Dutch peasants’ and their
alleged underwater activity. The allusion appears to be to Anabaptists, some
of whom were associated with Paracelsians and Rosicrucians, but Libavius was
thinking especially of the Dutchman Cornelis Drebbel, an Anabaptist magus
31
Libavius, Syntagmatis (1615), 58. On Libavius’ intellectual mission, see: Trevor-Roper, Europe’s
Physician (2006), 85-92, 129-130 and Moran, Andreas Libavius (2007); for the quarrel with Croll,
see: especially 215-223, 239-242.
In these mirrors of various virtues I would see everything in the cosmos more cer-
tainly than if I were in the Tower of the Universe with Amadis of Gaul… And were
I to ask about its composition, I would be told that it was made of minerals of all
the planets under a certain constellation, and that it can put the enemy to flight far
more powerfully than can the armour of the Achillean burgrave [Albert III, Elector of
Brandenberg, 1414-1486] and the starry tube [fistula constellata].35
32
On Drebbel’s rustic persona, see: Tierie, Drebbel (1932), 18, 27, 96 n. 3, n. 4; on his interest in
optical devices see: Worp, Huygens, ‘Constantijn Huygens. Fragment eener Autobiographie’ (1897),
119, and Tierie, Drebbel (1932), 50, 52. For his tardy renown as inventor of the telescope, see: Van
Helden, Invention (1977), 55, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64; for Badovere’s letter see: Van Tricht, Hooft. De
briefwisseling, 1 (1976), 91.
33
The burning of these books is described in Don Quixote I, vi, published in 1605.
34
Willach, The Long Route (2008), 70-84.
35
Libavius, Syntagmatis (1615), 271.
36
Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment’ (1999) and Ioppolo, Dramatists (2006), 159-169. On Conway’s
participation at The Hague see: Shaw, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord de l’Isle and Dudley, 4 (1942),
71.
37
Van Helden, Invention of the Telescope (1977), 14-17, 29-31 and Dupré, ‘Making of Practical
Optics’ (2009).
38
Van Helden, Invention of the Telescope (1977), 44.
What do you lack? What is’t you buy? Very fine China stuffs, of all kinds and quali-
ties? China chains, China bracelets, China scarves, China fans, China girdles, China
knives, China boxes, China cabinets, Caskets, Umbrellas, Sundials, Hourglasses,
Looking glasses, Burning glasses, Concave glasses, Triangular glasses, Convex glasses,
Crystal globes, Waxen pictures, Ostrich eggs, Birds of Paradise, Muscats, Indian mice,
Indian rats, China dogs and China cats? … Beards of all ages, Visors, Spectacles! See
what you lack!42
Though the glassy items appear in the midst of merchandise from the Far
East, they are neither explicitly associated with such wares, nor entirely dif-
ferentiated from them. The emphasis upon objects that alter vision through
reflection or refraction, the fact that the spiel ends with the crescendo of
39
Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment’ (1999), 115-116.
40
Purnell, Report on the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Downshire, 2 (1937), 88, 90, 97, 104, 106,
186, 228, 229, 239, and 3, 238, 268; for payment to Petrosani’s wife or widow, see: Devon, Issues of
the Exchequer (1836), 167.
41
Purnell, Report on the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Downshire, 2 (1937), 89.
42
Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment’ (1999), 134. In this and the following passage I have slightly
modernized the spelling, and added punctuation.
[Mountebank]: Here be Glasses, too, that I almost forgot… First, a triangular which
laid thus, shows you all manner of colours by refraction, and instructs you in the true
natural cause of your rainbow. A convex that diminishes forms… A concave that aug-
ments them… Then here’s a spectacle, an excellent pair of multiplying eyes… But
here’s my jewel, my perspective. I will read you with this glass the distinction of any
man’s clothes ten, nay, twenty miles off, the colour of his horse, cut or long tail, the
form of his beard, the shape of his face.
[Mountebank]: Your Majesty, if it be but half [i.e., in profile] I care not. Nay, I will tell
by the moving of his lips what he speaks and in what language. If the sun shines any-
thing strong, I will stand you in Covent Garden and decipher at Highgate the subtlest
character you can make, as easily as here. But I am promised a glass shortly from a
great master in the Catoptrics, that I shall stand with on the top of [Saint] Paul’s when
the new spire is built, and set fire on a ship twenty leagues at sea in what[soever] line
I will by parabolical fiction.43
This passage, the messiest of the entire manuscript, was written by three dif-
ferent hands, and was subject to costly eleventh-hour revisions the night before
the production took place.44 It is notable for its random assortment of glasses
and mirrors – a feature that may explain the mountebank’s apparent confusion
of convex and concave lenses – and for the comic and yet familiar extravagance
of his claims. The prism or ‘triangular glass’ may well have come from the col-
lection of Sir Walter Cope, who had lent just such an item to Thomas Harriot
in this period, and whose wunderkammer might have been the source for other
objects in the masque; the fact that Cope’s prism, for all its novelty, was rather
badly polished might justify its inclusion with the optical rubble the mounte-
bank was trying to unload.45 The ‘prospective,’ as it is presented here, rests on
the usual assertions about deciphering subtle characters, whether alphabetical
or moral, from a great distance. Whatever its physical configuration, it also
43
Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment’ (1999), 137.
44
Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment’ (1999), 117-123 and Ioppolo, Dramatists (2006), 161-169.
45
Gage, Colour and Meaning (1999), 132 and Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment’ (1999), 116.
46
Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment’ (1999), 116.
Introduction
If everything leading up to the invention of the telescope might be called its
prehistory, its history begins when Hans Lipperhey set out from Middelburg,
on 25 September 1608, to go to The Hague with his new spyglass. Between
Count Maurits’ observation of the church clock in Delft at the end of
September of that year and Galileo’s observations of the Moon a year later,
spyglasses spread rapidly over Europe, and we may assume that a number of
owners turned these gadgets to the heavens. Indeed, in the newsletter printed
in The Hague in October the author reported that ‘... even the stars which
ordinarily are invisible to our sight and our eyes, because of their smallness
and the weakness of our sight, can be seen with this instrument.’1 There were
also attempts to improve the device, of which we have evidence from the pa-
pers of Thomas Harriot, who drew a likeness of the 5-day old Moon seen
through a six-powered instrument on 2 August 1609, and from the introduc-
tion of Simon Marius’ Mundus Iovialis of 1614.2 But the first observations that
produced publishable results were the Moon drawings made by Galileo late
in 1609, and not until the beginning of 1610 did Galileo have instruments
good enough to observe the planets. What followed was a period of celes-
tial discovery that culminated in the first telescopic observations of sunspots
– by Harriot in December 1610, followed by Johannes Fabricius, Christoph
Scheiner, and Galileo in 1611. After the summer of 1611, no new discoveries
were made, except for the observation of the Andromeda Galaxy by Simon
Marius in 1612.3 In this paper I want to examine why the Galilean telescope’s
potential for discovery was exhausted so quickly.
1
Ambassades (1608), 10. See also: Zoomers & Zuidervaart, Embassies (2008), 37, 43, and 49.
2
East Sussex Records Office, Harriot Papers, HMC241/9, p. 2b.; Marius, Mundus Iovialis (1614),
first two unnumbered pages of the ‘Praefatio ad candidem lectorem’. See also: Prickard, ‘The
“Mundus Jovialis” of Simon Marius’ (1916), 370-371; Schlör (ed.), Simon Marius Mundus Iovialis-
Die Welt des Jupiter (1988), 36-37.
3
Mundus Iovialis, fifth unnumbered page of the ‘Praefatio’; Schlör (ed.), Marius – Die Welt des
Jupiter (1988), 45.
About the secret of the spyglass [occhiale], I have seen it and it is a hoax [coglionaria],
and taken from the ninth book of my De refractione.... It is a small tube of soldered
silver, one palm in length, ad, and three fingerbreadths [diti] in diameter, which has
a convex glass in the end, a. There is another tube of the same [material], 4 finger-
breadths long, which enters into the first one, and in the end b it has a concave [glass],
which is secured like the first one. If observed with that first tube, faraway things are
seen as if they were near, but because the vision does not occur along the perpendicu-
lar, they appear obscure and indistinct. When the other concave tube, which produces
the opposite effect, is inserted, things will be seen clear and erect. And it goes in and
4
Della Porta, Magia Naturalis (1589), book xvii, ch. 10. Cited from the first English edition,
Natural Magick (1658), 368.
5
Della Porta is referring here to the short straight shank which served to lower the pitch in trumpets
and trombones. See: Kurtzman and Koldau, ‘Trombe, Trombe d’argento, trombe squarciate, trom-
boni, and pifferi in Venetian Processions and Ceremonies of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century’
(2002), sections 28.1-30.5, 41.3-41.4, and 45.1-45.2. On the early history of the slide trombone
(trombe a tiro), see Grove & Sadie, The Grove Dictionary of Music, 19 (1980), 166-168.
6
Giambaptista della Porta to Federico Cesi, in: Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 252.
7
In 1609 Johannes Walchius described a spyglass ‘a cubit’ long – about 18 inches or 46 cm. in
length – and 3 fingerbreadths in diameter (Walchius, Decas fabularum humani (1609), 249-250). It
seems reasonable to assume that the spyglass described by della Porta is representative in length.
Galileo’s telescopes
There have been two questions about Galileo’s first telescope: if his friend Paolo
Sarpi received the The Hague newsletter by November 1608, why did Galileo
not make his first spyglass until the middle of the summer of 1609; and how
much information did Galileo have about the device before he made his own?
The first question has recently been answered by Eileen Reeves, who argues
convincingly that it was a combination of circumstances. First, those in Italy
trying to make devices for seeing faraway things had put their hopes on a large
mirror as the primary receptor. Large mirrors up to perhaps a meter in diam-
eter were being made by Galileo’s colleague, Giovanni Antonio Magini at the
8
Willach, The Long Route to the Invention of the Telescope, 70-84. Note that Thomas Harriot’s 6-pow-
ered telescope with which he observed the Moon in August 1610 was perhaps a combination of F
= 60 cm and f = –10 cm, lenses that may just have been available in a spectacle-maker’s shop. See
Harriot MSS, HMC 241/9, fol. 2b. See about Harriot’s telescope also: North, ‘Thomas Harriot and
the first telescopic observations of sunspots’ (1974).
9
The ratio of the focal length to the aperture of the telescopes ascribed to Galileo are 65 and 51,
respectively. See Van Helden, A Catalogue of Early Telescopes (1999), 30-32. This high ratio was nec-
essary to minimize chromatic aberration. In the astronomical telescope, the convex eyepiece made
chromatic aberration even worse, and aperture ratios were in excess of 100.
10
Watson, Stargazer (2004), 109-112.
11
Le Mercure François, ou la suitte de l’histoire de la paix (Paris 1611), 338v-339v.
12
Sirtori, Telescopium (1618), 23-24.
13
Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope (1977), 39
14
Il Saggiatore (1623); Galilei, Opere, 6 (1896), 258. See also Drake and O’Malley, The Controversy
of the Comets of 1618 (1960), 211-213.
15
Marius, Mundus Iovialis, second unnumbered page of Praefatio; Prickard, ‘The “Mundus Jovialis”
of Simon Marius’ (1916), 370-371; Schlör (ed.), Die Welt des Jupiter (1988), 39; Sirtori, Telescopium
(1618), 23-30. See also Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope (1977), 47-51.
16
Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 270, note 1. See also Strano, ‘La Lista della Spesa di Galileo’ (2009).
17
Marcantonio Mazzoleni entered Galileo’s household in 1599 where he made the new military
compass that Galileo had invented. He remained there until Galileo went to Florence in 1610.
Galilei, Opere, 19 (1908), 132-147).
18
Bedini, ‘Lens Making for Scientific Instruments in the Seventeenth Century’ (1966).
19
A list of materials needed for lens making, to be purchased in Venice, written on a letter from
Ottavio Brenzoni to Alessandro Piersanti of 24 November 1609, includes 2 artillery balls, a tin organ
pipe, polished German lenses, polished rock crystal, pieces of mirror, Tripoli powder, various iron
and stone forms, Greek pitch, and felt; Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 270. The list bears close resem-
blance to items mentioned by Della Porta in his brief description of lens manufacture. See: Della
Porta, Magia naturalis (1589), book XVII, Ch.21, 278-279. See also Strano, ‘La lista della spesa di
Galileo’ (2009).
20
In September 1610, Christoph Clavius wrote to Galileo that several of his telescopes circulated
in Rome, and he asked why the objective lenses were so large, only to be stopped down to a small
aperture (Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 485). Galileo replied that there two reasons: first, to be able to
shape the lens more accurately; second, if one wanted to see a larger field of view, one could uncover
the objective entirely and use it with a weaker eyepiece and a shorter tube (Galilei, Opere, 10, 561).
It may be that this was also one of the reasons why Galileo ordered polished German spectacle lenses,
which were usually 5 cm or more in diameter.
21
Galileo to Belisario Vinta, 29 March 1610. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 301.
22
On image placement, see Ronchi, Optics (1991), 124-204.
23
Galileo to an unidentified correspondent, 7 January 1610. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 278.
Galileo’s observations
Galileo seems to have been in Florence in October 1609 to show the Moon
as it appeared through a telescope with a magnifying power of perhaps 10 to
the young Grand Duke, Cosimo II, whom he had tutored in mathematical
subjects during previous summers. By this time, Galileo had made telescopes
of quality sufficient to show some detail on the Moon; he helped the Grand
Duke see these features, and suggested an interpretation. As he wrote several
months later, ‘That the Moon is a body very similar to the Earth had already
been ascertained by me and shown to some extent to our Most Serene Lord,
although imperfectly because I did not yet have an instrument of the excel-
lence that I have now.’25 By November, Galileo managed to make a lens for
a twenty-powered instrument. His labours were at this point beginning to
produce important results: he could now discern the rough lunar surface even
more clearly, and he had entered into the universe of the telescope. He em-
barked upon an observation project that lasted from the end of November to
the middle of December 1609, observing the Moon from the age of three days
to a few days beyond the Full Moon, and making a number of drawings.26
He almost certainly intended to publish these results, for a long unsent letter
of 7 January 1610 contains much of what was to appear about the Moon in
Sidereus Nuncius, two months later.27
It has been argued that Galileo was particularly well equipped to see relief
on the Moon because of both his training in disegno – the art of drawing and
24
North, ‘Thomas Harriot and the First Telescopic Observations of Sunspots’ (1974). See esp. the
appendix (158-160): ‘On the Early Dutch (so-called ‘Galilean’) Telescope, and its Field of View.’ See
also the website CCD Images from a Galilean Telescope (2006) by Tom Pope and Jim Mosher, http://
www.pacifier.com/~tpope/index.htm (5 September 2010). Johannes Kepler, in his Narratio de Iovis
satellitibus (1611), related his observations made with a telescope made by Galileo. He noted that its
field of view ‘barely showed half the Moon’s diameter.’ See Galilei, Opere, 3 (1893), 185.
25
Galileo to Belisario Vinta, 30 January 1610, Opere, 10 (1900), 280; Drake, Galileo at Work (1978),
142. I have used a part of Drake’s translation.
26
Whitaker, ‘Galileo’s Lunar Observations and the Dating of the Composition of Sidereus Nuncius’
(1978).
27
Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 273-278.
28
Edgerton, ‘Galileo, Florentine Disegno, and the ‘Strange Spottednesse’ of the Moon’ (1984);
idem, The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry (1991), 223-253.
29
Reeves, Painting the Heavens (1997), 91-137.
30
David Wootton points out that Galileo added this material to strengthen his Copernican argu-
ment, and that his explanation of earth-shine was specifically meant to undermine Tycho Brahe’s
world system in which the Earth was still fundamentally different from the heavenly region. See
Wootton, ‘New Light on the Composition and Publication of Sidereus Nuncius’ Galilaeana 6 (2009)
123-140, at 138.
31
Galileo to Johannes Kepler, 4 August 1597. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 70.
The first is to make it possible to work it more accurately because a large surface is
more easily kept in the proper shape than a smaller one. The other reason is that if
one wants to see a larger space in one glance, the glass can be uncovered, but it is then
necessary to put a less acute glass near the eye and shorten the tube, otherwise the
objects will appear very fuzzy.34
32
Galileo to Antonio de Medici, 7 January 1610. Ibidem, 273, 278.
33
Clavius to Galileo, 15 December 1610. Ibidem, 485
34
Galileo to Clavius, 30 December 1610. Ibidem, 502.
And besides the observations of the Moon, I have observed the following in the other
stars. First, that many fixed stars are seen with the spyglass that are not discerned
without it; and only this evening I have seen Jupiter accompanied by three fixed stars,
totally invisible because of their smallness; and the configuration was in this form:35
Ill. 3. Galilei’s observation of ‘three fixed stars’ (in fact moons) around Jupiter on 7
January 1610.
This passage is pregnant with the discovery of Jupiter’s satellite, but its brev-
ity should also be noted. The instrument that allowed these observations to be
made must have been finished very recently, and Galileo had only examined
the brightest planet in the heavens, Jupiter. He had nothing, yet, to say about
the other planets.
When Galileo returned to this formation the following evening, he found
that Jupiter had moved with respect to these ‘stars,’ and over the next few days
he observed that they changed their positions relative to Jupiter and to each
other, while at the same time accompanying the planet in its motion with re-
spect to the fixed stars. Solving this problem was by no means easy. The field of
view of the telescope was small and on 8 January he missed one of the moons
that was at its furthest elongation; the optics were by no means perfect, and
when a moon was close to the planet it was lost in the glare; and on 9 January
35
Ibidem, 277.
36
Gingerich and Van Helden, ‘From Occhiale to Printed Page: The Making of Galileo’s Sidereus
Nuncius’ (2003), 252, 264; Galilei, Opere 3 (1893), 427.
37
Ambassades (1608), 11.
38
Although this unit is independent of Jupiter’s distance from the Earth, optical inaccuracies and
improper focusing of the telescope could introduce errors in this method. See Drake, Telescopes
Tides, and Tactics (1983), 63-67.
39
Paolo Gualdo to Galileo, 20 July 1611. Galilei, Opere, 11 (1901), 211. Cremonini’s reaction and
his relationship to Galileo are discussed in: Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance (2007)
1-59.
40
Lodovico Cigoli to Galileo, 1 October 1610. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 442.
41
Antonio Santini to Galileo, 4 December 1610; Christoph Clavius to Galileo, 17 December 1610.
Ibidem, 480, 485.
The incomparable Galileo, who was the first to direct a telescope to the sky – although
the telescope had then only recently been invented and was not yet in all respects per-
fected – so overcame yielding nature, that all celestial mysteries were at once disclosed
to him.45
From Wren’s historical perspective (and from ours), this was reasonable
enough, but a detailed look at the events of 1609-1612 shows that the disclo-
sure of ‘celestial mysteries’ took some time, and that, in fact, only a handful
were revealed. Galileo’s telescope could reach out only so far into space, limiting
it to discovery within the solar system. But not all targets were easily accessible
42
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 36.
43
Galilei, Opere, 3 (1893), 436. See also: Biagioli, Galileo’s Instruments of Credit (2006), 113-115.
44
Martin Horky to Johannes Kepler, Opere 10 (1900), 342-343. See also: Biagioli, Galileo’s
Instruments of Credit (2006), 113-115.
45
Van Helden, ‘Christopher Wren, De corpore Saturni’ (1968), 219.
As for Mars, I would not dare to affirm anything as certain, but having observed it
for the past four months it appears to me that in these past few days it has grown in
size by scarcely a third of what it was this past September; and it is seen somewhat
reduced on the eastern part if the expectation (affetto) does not deceive me, which I
don’t believe.48
It appears that Galileo was checking whether he could verify the slight
phase phenomenon that depended on the angle between Mars and the Sun.
He felt satisfied that he had (probably) been able to do so, and pointed out
that this effect would be much more pronounced when Mars had reached
quadrature. But its disc would then be so small that its precise shape would be
difficult to determine.49
46
Van Helden, ‘The Importance of the Transit of Mercury of 1631’ (1976).
47
Indeed as early as December 1611, Christoph Scheiner tried to observe a transit of Venus at
superior conjunction: if the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic order of the planets was correct, and Venus and
Mercury were always ‘below’ the Sun, then Venus should be observed transiting the Sun; if Venus’s
shadow did not appear on the Sun, then the planet was beyond (‘above’) the Sun, as predicted by the
theories of Copernicus and Tycho Brahe. Thomas Harriot’s second sunspot observation was made
on the same date, 11 December, and it contains astronomical shorthand to indicate that there was a
conjunction of Venus and the Sun on this day. Harriot MSS, HMC 241/8, 2.
48
Galileo to Benedetto Castelli, 30 December 1610. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 502-504, at 503.
49
Ibidem.
50
On Galileo and Saturn, see Van Helden, ‘Saturn and his Anses’ (1974).
51
Deiss and Nebel, ‘On a Pretended Observation of Saturn by Galileo’ (1998).
52
Only two records of observations of Mercury can be found in Galileo’s notes. See: Galilei, Opere
3 (1893), 450-452.
53
Galileo to Benedetto Castelli, 30 December 1610; See also: Galileo to Christoph Clavius,
30 December 1610. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 499-503.
54
Galilei, Opere, 5 (1895), 100, 196-197. At about the same time, the mathematicians of the Collegio
Romano verified the phases of Venus with a 30-powered instrument. See Christoph Grienberger to
Galileo, 22 January 1611. Galilei, Opere, 11 (1901), 34.
55
Note that although Copernicus did not predict the phases of Venus, he did discuss the order of
Mercury, Venus, and the Sun, in a manner that could in retrospect be interpreted as such a predic-
tion. See Copernicus, De revolutionibus (1543), Book I, chapter 10; Copernicus, On the Revolutions
(1978), 18-20.
56
Galileo to Giuliano de’ Medici, 11 December 1610. Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 483
Conclusion
From the time Galileo began to make telescopic observations of the heavens, in
the autumn of 1609, to the sunspot observations of Thomas Harriot, Galileo,
and Christoph Scheiner, in 1611, was about two years. The rough surface of
the Moon, the myriad fixed stars, the moons of Jupiter, tricorporeal Saturn,
57
Galilei, Opere, 5 (1895), 253-254.
58
Bredekamp, Galilei der Künstler (2007), 230-236.
There is nothing new here in Italy, except that a spyglass has arrived that make faraway
things visible. I admire it very much because of the beauty of the invention and the
1
On Francesco Castrino and the Papal interception of his correspondence with Sarpi, see Busnelli,
‘Un carteggio inedito’ (1928).
2
Ambassades du Roy de Siam (1608), 9-11.
3
Sarpi to Castrino, 9 December 1609: ‘Recevei dalla Haga, un mese e,’ il riporto che Vosra Signoria
mi manda, sopra l’ambasciata al conte Maurizio del re Indo di Siama, e sopra li nuovi occhiali fab-
bricati da quell valent’uomo […]’ (‘One month ago, I received from The Hague the report that you
sent me about the embassay of the King of Siam to Count Maurice, and about the new glasses made
by that craftsman’), in: Sarpi, Lettere ai Protestanti, 2 (1931), 15.
4
‘[…] News came that a Hollander had presented to Count Maurice a glass by means of which….’
Galilei, The Assayer (Rome, 1623), cited in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 52.
First published in 1833, this letter was surprisingly excluded from Galileo’s
Opere and, perhaps because of that, has remained invisible to the current gen-
eration of Galileo scholars.6 It establishes the arrival of a telescope in Venice
about two weeks earlier than commonly reported in the literature – not at the
very beginning of August but, as I will show, somewhere between the 8th and
the 20th of July.7 Two or three weeks may not seem like much, but in fact they
force us to seriously rethink crucial elements of the chronology and originality
of Galileo’s development of the telescope, and to reconsider the accuracy of
the narratives about these events he offered in the Sidereus nuncius, The Assayer,
and the letter of 29 August 1609 to his brother-in-law, Benedetto Landucci.8
It also re-opens old debates about Sarpi’s role in the development of Galileo’s
instrument.
In particular, Sarpi’s letter to Castrino indicates that, by the time Galileo
put his telescope-making efforts in high gear, he may have known a lot more
about other people’s telescopes than he cared to admit. He always maintained
that he had only heard that the telescope existed, but it now seems most likely
5
Sarpi to Castrino, 21 July 1609: ‘In Italia non abbiamo cosa nuova: solo e’ comparso quell’occhiale
che fa vedere le cose lontane; il quale io ammiro molto per la bellezza dell’invenzione e per la dignita’
dell’arte, ma per uso della Guerra ne’ in terra ne’ in mare, io non lo stimo niente,’ in: Sarpi, Lettere
ai Protestanti, 2 (1931), 45.
6
The virtual invisibility of the letter remains a bit of a puzzle, given that it has been published
numerous times – in 1833, 1847, 1863, and 1931 (Sarpi, Scelte lettere inedite (1833), 72; Sarpi,
Scelte lettere inedite (1847), 182; Sarpi, Lettere, 1 (1863), 279; Sarpi, Lettere ai Protestanti, 2 (1931),
45). In recent times it has been noticed only, to the best of my knowledge, by one Sarpi scholar –
Libero Sosio – who, however, did not recognize its relevance to the chronology of the invention of
the telescope. (Sosio, ‘Fra Paolo Sarpi e la cosmologia’ (1996), CLXV). More puzzling is Antonio
Favaro’s decision not to include it in the Opere, despite having known and cited this letter twice early
in his career, prior to embarking on the Opere project: Favaro, ‘Fra Paolo Sarpi fisico e matematico
secondo I nuovi studi’ (1883), 909; Favaro, ‘Il telescopio’ (1883, reprinted 1966), 277. In a later
article, he even seemed to forget that that letter existed: ‘non abbiamo documenti i quali provino
che lo strumento abbia fatta la sua comparsa in Padova avanti la fine del Luglio’ (‘We do not have
documents that would prove that the instrument had made its appearance in Padua before the end
of July’; see: Favaro, ‘La invenzione del telescopio’ (1907), reprinted in Favaro, Galileo Galilei a
Padova (1968), 175).
7
Lorenzo Pignoria to Paolo Gualdo, 1 August, 1609: ‘Uno degli occhiali in canna, di che ella mi
scrisse gia`, e` comparso qui in mano d’un Oltramontano’ (‘One of the glasses in a tube, about which
you wrote me has appeared here in the hands of a foreigner’), in: Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 250.
8
Favaro, ‘Galilei e la presentazione del cannocchiale alla Repubblica Veneta’ (1891); Rosen, ‘The
Authenticity of Galileo’s Letter to Landucci’ (1951).
that Galileo had access to a detailed description of the construction and per-
formance of an actual telescope brought to Venice by a northern European ar-
tisan or merchant. He might even have inspected the instrument itself.9 Sarpi’s
letter to Castrino – together with other evidence about Galileo’s movements
in that period – places him in Venice on the same days when a foreigner was
offering his own telescope to the Venetian Senate and the instrument was be-
ing tested and inspected by his close friend Paolo Sarpi. This was, I argue, the
instrument Sarpi referred to in his letter of 21 July to Castrino.
Filippo de Vivo has shown that Sarpi timed his letter-writing to the sched-
uled departures of the couriers rather than to the pace of the news – typically
every week or fortnight.10 Several of his letters to Northern European cor-
respondents bore, in fact, the same dates. On 21 July 1609 he wrote to both
Castrino and Christoph von Dohna, and on 7 July (the date of the previous
9
This is a hypothesis that, surprisingly enough, has been seriously entertained only in the last few
years: Strano, ‘Galileo’s Telescope’ (2009), 19. Favaro, who was initially more open-minded than
most, acknowledged the possibility, but brushed it off as irrelevant: ‘poco importa il discutere se in
Padova od in Venezia, sulla semplice voce, cioe` sine exemplo, oppure dopo aver anche veduto uno
di quei volgari tubi, la vista del quale ben poco poteva aggiungere alla sommaria descrizione che
ne avesse udita o letta […]’ (‘It matters little to discuss whether in Padua or Venice, on the mere
rumour, that is, without an example, or after having also seen one of these common tubes that
could add little to the summary description which he had heard or read’; Favaro, ‘La invenzione del
telescopio’ (1968), 176).
10
De Vivo, ‘Paolo Sarpi and the Uses of Information in Seventeenth-Century Venice’ (2005), 39.
The reports about the new spyglasses […] are credible enough to make me look and
philosophize no further, having Socrates prohibited to speculate over phenomena that
we have not seen ourselves. When I was young, I thought about a similar device, and
it occurred to me that a glass made in the shape of a parabula could produce such a
[magnifying] effect. I had demonstrative arguments, but because they are abstract [by
nature] and do not take into account material constraints, I hesitated. For that reason,
I did not pursue that work, which would have been labourious. Consequently, I nei-
ther confirmed nor refuted my hypothesis through experience…12
11
Paolo Sarpi to Giuseppe Castrino, 9 December 1609: ‘[…] m’ha dato assai da pensare; ma perche’
questi filosofi comandano che non si specula la causa prima di vedere con propri sensi l’effetto, mi
son rimesso ad aspettare che una cosa cosi` nobile si diffondi per l’Europa,’ (‘It has given me much
to think about, but because these philosophers command not to speculate on the first cause of vi-
sion by itself without the effect, I have submitted and wait for such a noble thing to spread through
Europe’), in: Sarpi, Lettere ai Protestanti, 2 (1931), 15.
12
Paolo Sarpi to Jerome Groslot de l’Isle, 6 January 1609: ‘L’avviso delli nuovi occhiali […] lo credo
per quanto basta a non cercar piu’ oltre, per non filosofarci sopra, proibendo Socrate il filosofare so-
pra esperienza non veduta da se’ proprio. Quando io era giovane, pensai ad una tal cosa, e mi passo’
per la mente che un occhiale fatto di figura di parabola potesse far tal effetto; aveva ragioni demon-
strative, ma perche` queste sono astratte e non mettono in conto la repugnaza della materia, sentiva
qualche opposizione. Per questo non [mi] son molto inclinato all’opera, e questa sarebbe stata fa-
ticosa: onde ne’ confirmai ne’ reprobai il pensiero mio con l’esperienza,’ (‘I believe the news about
the new glasses as far as it goes for it suffices not to search further and not to philosophize about
it. Socrates prohibits philosophizing about experiences not personally seen. When I was young, I
thought about such a thing, and it occurred to me that a glass made in the shape of a parabola could
produce such an effect; there were demonstrated reasons. But because these are abstract and do not
take into account the stubbornness of the material, some opposition was heard. Because of this, I am
not much inclined toward the task – and it would have been tiring; and thus I neither confirmed nor
disproved my my idea by experience’), in Sarpi, Lettere ai Protestanti, 1 (1931), 59.
[…] About the Dutch spectacles, I have given your Lordship my thoughts, but I could
be wrong. If you gather more about them, I’d like to hear what is thought there. I have
almost stopped to think about physical and mathematical topics. Either because of
age or habit, my brain has become a bit thick for those reflections.13
13
Paolo Sarpi to Giacomo Badoer, 30 March 1609, in: Paolo Sarpi, Opere (1969) [my translation].
14
Paolo Sarpi to Jerome Groslot de l’Isle, 6 January 1609, in: Sarpi, Lettere ai Protestanti, 1 (1931), 79.
15
Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks (2008), 115-138.
16
‘Minutes of the States General,’ 15 December 1608, printed in: Van Helden, Invention (1977),
42.
17
Van Helden, Invention (1977), 36; Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 250-251.
Vague narratives
In Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo wrote that:
About 10 months ago a rumor came to our ears that a spyglass had been made by a
certain Dutchman by means of which visible objects, although far removed from the
eye of the observer, were distinctly perceived as though nearby. About this truly won-
derful effect some accounts were spread abroad, to which some gave credence while
others denied them. The rumor was confirmed to me a few days later by a letter from
Paris from the noble Frenchman Jacques Badovere. This finally caused me to apply
myself totally to investigating the principles and figuring out the means by which I
might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument, which I achieved shortly after-
wards [‘at once’ in the ms.] on the basis of the science of refraction.19
(Sarpi’s name is not mentioned in the Nuncius, but Galileo probably heard
of both the telescope’s invention and of Badovere’s letter from his Venetian
friend).20 More than two decades later, responding to Orazio Grassi’s challenge
to his inventorship of the telescope, Galileo took a few pages of The Assayer
to flesh out the bare-bone narrative first proposed in the Nuncius. He added
some chronological specificity to his previous story, while also re-stating a key
point, that is, that all the technical information contained in the early reports
he heard about the telescope amounted to ‘nothing more’ than the instrument
18
Giovanni Bartoli to Belisario Vinta, 29 August 1609, in: Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 255.
19
Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius or Sidereal Messenger (English translation, 1989), 36-37.
20
In the Nuncius, Galileo does not say that Badovere’s letter was to him (which leaves open the
possibility that Galileo read a letter sent to Sarpi). In any case, Sarpi had heard of the telescope in
early November 1608, and would have been most likely to share the news with Galileo very soon
after receiving it. Eileen Reeves presents a more complicated story, arguing that Badovere sent the
same report to both Sarpi and Galileo, through the same courier. She argues there were two letters
from Badovere in response to the queries from Venice. The first one, she argues, was disappointingly
vague, but the second was more detailed (Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks (2008), 133-138). None of
these possible letters, however, survive.
I say that the aid afforded me by the news awoke in me the will to apply my mind to
it; but beyond that I do not believe that such news could facilitate the invention. I
say, moreover, that to discover the solution of a known and designated problem is a
labor of much greater ingenuity that to solve a problem which has not been thought
of and defined, for luck may play a large role in the latter while the former is entirely
the work of reasoning.23
My reasoning was this. The device needs either a single glass or more than one. It can-
not consist of one alone, because the shape of that one would have to be a convex (that
is, thicker in the middle than at the edges), or concave (that is, thinner in the middle),
or contained between parallel surfaces. But the last named does not alter visible ob-
jects in any way, either by enlarging or reducing them; the concave diminishes them;
and the convex, while it does indeed increase them, shows them very indistinctly and
confusedly. Therefore, a single glass is not sufficient to produce the effect. Passing next
to two, and knowing as before that a glass with parallel faces alters nothing, I con-
cluded that the effect would still not be achieved by combining such a one with either
of the other two. Hence I was restricted to trying to discover what would be done by
21
‘Ne’ piu’ fu aggiunto’ (‘That was all’), in: Galileo, I1 saggiatore [The assayer] (1623), cited in: Van
Helden, Invention (1977), 51.
22
Even the discussion on the telescope with unnamed friends in Venice, which Galileo first reported
in The Assayer was not described as providing any additional information (Galileo, I1 saggiatore [The
assayer] (1623), cited in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 51-52).
23
Galileo, I1 saggiatore [The assayer] (1623), cited in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 52-53.
24
‘[…] which I achieved shortly afterward on the basis of the science of refraction’; Galileo, Sidereus
Nuncius or Sidereal Messenger (1989), 37.
Galileo’s claim that knowing of the existence of the telescope made the
discovery of its secret a more difficult task than the original invention looks
like a bit of a stretch. Also peculiar is the gap between his high-sounding
claims about his use of ‘reason’ and the ‘science of refraction’ and his descrip-
tion of his actual path to discovery which looks like a series of reasonably
simple guesses – guesses that, contrary to Galileo’s assumption, could have
been within the reach of a ‘simple maker of ordinary spectacles.’26 Taken to-
gether, these features of Galileo’s narrative suggest an attempt to maximize the
distance between his instrument and those developed in Northern Europe:
He had learned nothing from them and, in any case, his had been developed
following a method that was utterly alien to theirs. Galileo’s emphatic ampli-
fication of the differences may be a sign that the differences were, in fact, too
small for comfort.
His chronologies are not straightforward either. Those in the Nuncius and
The Assayer offer no explicit dates, only time intervals between events. Some of
those intervals are identified with specific markers (‘the following day…’), but
more often with vague expressions (‘for over a month…’). Those interested in
the actual timeline of Galileo’s work are left to reconstruct the chronological
structure within his narrative (the distance between the various events) and to
then find an event that can be attached to a specific date outside of the nar-
rative to function as the chronological anchor for the whole story. Galileo’s
multi-dimensional vagueness about dates, people, and information was, I be-
lieve, not accidental but tactical. He did not necessarily report things that had
25
Galileo, I1 saggiatore [The assayer] (1623), cited in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 53.
26
‘Con tutto il debito rispetto per ogni cosa che risguarda Galileo, ci e` forza riconoscere che quan-
do Galileo affermava speculazioni di prospettiva averlo condotto alla costruzione del cannocchiale,
egli non sapeva che cosa dicesse: anzi questa sola affermazione […] basterebbe a sostenere ch’egli non
vi adopero` maggior studio di quello che abbia fatto quell primo occhialaio di Middelburgo. […]
Galileo non era maggiormente sincero quando affermava che specolazioni istituite sulla rifrazione lo
avevano condotto al cannocchiale. Galileo infatti non ebbe mai una chiara idea della rifrazione….’
(‘With all the respect due all matters that regard Galileo, one must recognize that when Galileo af-
firmed that speculations about perspective led him to the construction of the telescope, he did not
know what he was saying; on the contrary, that single affirmation would be enough to maintain
that he did not undertake greater study than the first spectacle maker in Middelburg. Galileo was no
more sincere when he affirmed that speculations on refraction had led him to the telescope. In fact,
Galileo never had a clear idea of refraction.’) Cf. Favaro, ‘Il Telescopio’ (1883/1966), 274-275.
27
For instance Rosen does not believe that Galileo heard about the telescope on the day he reported
in The Assayer (17 July) because that chronology does not match what Galileo says in the Nuncius.
(Rosen, ‘When Did Galileo Make His First Telescope?’ (1951), 50). At the same time, Rosen recon-
structed the chronology of the Nuncius to minimize the discrepancy with The Assayer, as when he
concludes that Galileo heard of telescope in June 1609 (ibid., 47) when the end of May seems to be
a more reliable date. Rosen also remarked on the conspicuous differences between The Assayer and
Nuncius (ibid., 47). In ‘Il Telescopio ‘, Favaro states that ‘[…] dee riconoscersi che le tre narrazioni
non sono interamente conformi; oltrediche’ esse contengono assolute inesattezze […]’ (‘it must be
recognized that the three narrations are not entirely consistent; in other words these contain absolute
inaccuracies’). Favaro, ‘Il Telescopio’ (1883/1966), 272.
28
Rosen, ‘When Did Galileo Make His First Telescope?’ (1951), 45. Analogously, the change be-
tween ‘at once’ (in the manuscript of the Nuncius) to ‘shortly afterwards’ (in the printed version)
should be treated as a mere stylistic change in the pursuit of elegance: ‘Such instantaneity [of ‘at
once’] may have sounded out of step, on second hearing, with the preceding slow notes’ (Ibidem,
48).
29
Galileo listed, for instance, the dates of all his observations of the satellites of Jupiter.
30
For a smart discussion of the relationship between the establishment of discoveries, discovery
narratives, and authorship, see: Schaffer, ‘Scientific Discoveries and the End of Natural Philosophy’
(1986).
31
Rosen concluded his ‘When Did Galileo Make His First Telescope?’ (1951) by saying that: ‘In
his three separate accounts [of his invention], Galileo gives us a period of about two months to be filled
with the following intervals: a few days, at once, six days, more than a months, four days’ (page 50).
I can hardly imagine a better example of a historian assuming the illustration of the author as the
ordering principle of philological work: Galileo gives us a period and some intervals of his choosing
and it is our job to put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle he has designed. But what about
considering the possibility that the pieces may not be made to fit the puzzle, or that there may be
no coherent puzzle?’
32
Minutes of the States General, 15 December 1608, cited in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 42.
33
Biagioli, Instruments of Credit (2006), 77-134.
34
Biagioli, ‘From Print to Patent’ (2006), 147-152. More precisely, Galileo was not the inventor
of the family of instruments we now call refracting telescopes (or of the specific Dutch design), but
of the specific instrument whose performance was much appreciated by the Venetian senators who
tested and rewarded it in August 1609.
35
I do not think that the definition of ‘telescope’ had any legal meaning in so far as patents and
rewards were concerned. What was being evaluated and possibly rewarded were things, not ideas em-
bodied in things.
36
The Medici, of course, knew perfectly well about the widespread presence of the telescope in Europe
and that, therefore, Galileo was part of a process of innovation rather than its originator. Still, the story
of Galileo’s ‘invention’ of the telescope had to be told – that is, publicly told – in a certain way so as to
make it appear that the Medici were rewarding Galileo for his unique originality.
37
Galileo did eventually invoke the recognition by the Venetian Senate as evidence for his inven-
torship, but that was in the 1623 The Assayer in response to Grassi (Van Helden, Invention (1977),
52).
38
Sosio, ‘Fra Paolo Sarpi e la Cosmologia’ (1996) clxviii. The erasure of Sarpi from The Assayer, how-
ever, may not have been the result of the same considerations that excluded him from the Nuncius.
By 1623, Galileo was in the viewfinder of the Inquisition, and it might have been politically wise
for him not to mention the name of a notoriously unorthodox theologian like Sarpi at that point
in time.
39
Also to patronage logic we may trace Galileo’s decision to mention in print only the first telescope
presented to Count Maurits in the Netherlands, while skipping the dozens that had been sold and
shown around Europe by the summer of 1609 – a population that would have impaired Galileo’s claim
to uniqueness. It also seems that, in an attempt to make the origin of the telescope a bit less humble
and a little more Medici-compatible, Galileo referred to the original discoverer as ‘a certain Dutchman,’
but refrained from saying that he was an ignorant artisan (which he effectively said years later in The
Assayer: ‘The Hollander who was first to invent the telescope was a simple maker of ordinary spectacles
[…].’ Cf. Van Helden, Invention (1977), 53). Disparaging the original maker would have cheapened
Galileo’s own gift in 1610, but could be brought up two decades later, when his patronage relationship
with the Medici was a long established fact. In sum, Galileo had plenty of good patronage reasons for
writing a vague narrative about his development of the telescope.
Galileo’s chronologies
Having reviewed Galileo’s possible reasons for writing vague narratives about
his development of the telescope (including vague gestures toward the role of
the ‘science of refraction’ in that process), we need to look at the narratives
themselves and see how they are challenged by Sarpi’s letter to Castrino, dated
21 July.
The Nuncius’ story is not only vague, but also very difficult to reconcile
with the one in The Assayer. Taking mid-March 1610 (the date on which the
Nuncius came off the press in Venice) as the chronological benchmark for his
statement that, ‘about 10 months ago a rumor came to our ears that a spy-
glass had been made by a certain Dutchman…’ that would place the rumor
around 15 May 1609. (This sounds remarkably late, given that his friend Sarpi
received the same rumor in early November 1608 and that the two were in
40
If you think this is strange, try Favaro ‘La invenzione del telescopio’ (1907/1968), 176: ‘Quello
che a noi parve di poter chiamare il ‘periodo eroico’ della storia della invenzione del telescopio in-
comincia il giorno in cui Galileo, poco importa il discutere se in Padova od in Venezia, sulla semplice
voce, cioe` sine exemplo, oppure dopo aver anche veduto uno di quei volgari tubi, la vista del quale
ben poco poteva aggiungere alla sommaria descrizione che ne avesse udita o letta, costrui` da se` lo
strumento e lo presento` alla Signoria.’ (‘That which it seems we can call the ‘heroic period’ of the
history of the invention of the telescope began on the day – it makes little difference whether in
Padua or Venice – on the simple rumour, that is without an example, or after having also seen one of
these common tubes that could add little to the summary description which he had heard or read,
construcded ‘all by himself ’ the instrument and presented it to the Senate’). In this article, Favaro
constructs a tripartite genealogy of the telescope: ‘Fabled,’ ‘Embrionic,’ and ‘Heroic’ – the latter
phase starting with Galileo. That allows Favaro to admit that several, even many, people invented
and re-invented the telescope prior to Galileo, but that Galileo was the first inventor of the last phase
– the one that really counts, the period in which ‘la conquista puo` dirsi compiuta e prelude a quell
seguito di meraviglie con le quali gli astronomi, armati di strumenti e di mezzi […] ci hanno resi
oggi familiari’ (‘the conquest can be said to be completed and a prelude to the suibsequent miracles
with which astronomers, armed with instruments and dimezzi have produced the familiar world
of today’). In sum, he uses Galileo’s astronomical discoveries (retrospectively) to confirm that his
telescope was different (because others did not make those discoveries with other telescopes), and
that Galileo, being the inventor of the telescope with which he made those discoveries, invented a
‘different’ telescope of which he was the first inventor. It is Galileo as the author of his discoveries,
who constructs Galileo as the inventor of the telescope.
I wrote [in the Nuncius] that in Venice […] news came that a Hollander had presented
to Count Maurits [of Nassau] a glass by means of which distant things might be seen
41
Favaro: ‘E` strano, stranissimo, anzitutto, che la notizia dell’invenzione olandese, pervenuta a
Venezia nel novembre 1608, come gia` abbiamo notato, non sia giunta agli orecchi di Galileo che nel
giugno dell’anno successivo, e che il Sarpi, che ne era al fatto, non ne abbia tenuto parola all’amico
suo o non gliene abbia scritto[…]’ (‘It is strange, very strange, very strange,above all that the news
of the Dutch invention, which had arrived in Venice in November 1608, as we have already noted,
did not reach the ears of Galileo until June of the following year, and that Sarpi, who was up on the
facts, did not tell his friend or did not write to him.’], Favaro, ‘Il Telescopio’ (1883/1966), 277. Add
Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks, 135 on Galileo’s possible contact with Badovere much earlier, in late
1608. Also add that Vincenzio Viviani’s ‘Life of Galileo’ places that rumour a little earlier ‘around
April or May 1609.’
42
Paolo Sarpi to Giacomo Badoer, 30 March 1609, in Sarpi, Opere (1969), 282.
43
Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius or Sidereal Messenger (1989), 37.
In the Nuncius Galileo clearly separates hearing the news of the Dutch
telescope, receiving Badovere’s confirmation ‘a few days later ‘, and developing
his telescope ‘shortly after’ seeing Badovere’s letter. In The Assayer, however,
the whole action is packed in one day: Galileo heard of the presentation of
the telescope to Count Maurits in The Hague while discussing with friends in
Venice about the telescope (which, one has to assume, included the contents
of Badovere’s letter), returned to Padua immediately and discovered the ‘secret’
of the telescope that same night. I am not necessarily questioning this dra-
matically compressed chronology presented in The Assayer, but simply want to
point out that if one reconstructs the whole chronology laid out in that book
(as Edward Rosen, Stillman Drake, and Antonio Favaro have done) then the
day of the Galileo’s invention of the telescope would have to be placed around
4 August (Drake) or 18 July (Rosen) or 15 July (Favaro) and not at the very be-
ginning of June as implied by the Nuncius.45 Perhaps the chronological vague-
ness of the Nuncius’ narrative may have been intended to suggest that Galileo
had developed his telescope earlier than he actually did, thus casting him as a
relative forerunner rather than a follower, but there is really no way to know.
The chronology of the Nuncius loses further credibility when we consider
a meeting that Galileo had with Piero Duodo regarding the improvement of
his contract at the University of Padua toward the end of June.46 Had Galileo
developed the telescope by then (as any reading of the Nuncius would imply
he should have), he would have brought that up with Duodo as leverage. Of
course the Nuncius’ chronology would become much more tenable and closer
to that of The Assayer if one tweaked the ‘about 10 months ago’ mentioned in
the printed version with something closer to the ‘about 8 months ago’ found in
the manuscript, but that would only show how unreliable the printed version
of the chronology really is.
44
Galileo, The Assayer, in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 52.
45
Rosen, ‘When Did Galileo Make His First Telescope?’ (1951), 50; Drake, ‘Galileo’s First Telescopes
at Padua and Venice’ (1959), 251. The letter to Landucci (29 September 1609) says ‘about two months
ago.’ Galileo Opere, vol 10 (1900), p. 253.
46
Duodo refers to that conversation in a 29 June letter to Galileo from Venice: Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900),
247. The letter is discussed in Drake, ‘Galileo’s First Telescopes at Padua and Venice’ (1959), 250.
48
Drake, ‘Galileo’s First Telescopes at Padua and Venice’ (1959), 249.
49
Sarpi, Lettere ai Protestanti, 2 (1931), 45.
50
Galileo, The Assayer, in Van Helden, Invention (1977), 52.
51
Lorenzo Pignoria to Paolo Gualdo, 1 August 1609: ‘[…] Uno degl’occhiali, di che ella mi scrisse
gia`, e` comparso qui in mano d’un Oltramontano’ (‘One of the glasses about which you write me
has already arrived here in the hands of a foreigner’), in: Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 250.
Rosen amended
Like Drake, Edward Rosen has offered a reconstruction of Galileo’s chronolo-
gies, coming up with a substantially earlier date for Galileo’s invention – some-
time between 5 July and 19 July. The difference between Rosen and Drake has
much to do with their sources. Drake looked at both The Assayer and Galileo’s
correspondence, but also at the dates of Galileo’s bookkeeping entries, using
them as evidence of his presence in Padua. Rosen did not look at Galileo’s ledger,
thus allowing for the possibility of Galileo being in Venice and performing the
tasks described in The Assayer when, in fact, he could not have been there. Rosen
also tried (and failed) to reconcile Galileo’s various chronologies ending up (after
some ad hoc adjustments) with a 5-19 July ‘window of invention’ – 19 July being
the latest possible date allowed by his reconstruction.53
52
Dalla Cronaca di Antonio Priuli: ‘21 Agosto. Andai io [Antonio Priuli], Geronimo Priuli
Procurator in Campanil di S. Marco con l’Eccellente Gallileo, et […] l’Eccellente Dottor Cavalli,
a vedere le meraviglie et effetti singolari del cannon di detto Gallileo, che era di banda, fodrato al
di fuori di rassa gottonada cremesina, di longhezza tre quarte ½ incirca et larghezza di uno scudo,
con due veri, uno […] cavo, l’altro no, per parte; con il quale, posto a un ochio e serando l’altro,
ciasched’uno di noi vide distintamente, oltre Liza Fusina e Marghera, anco Chioza, Treviso et sino
Conegliano, et il campanile et cubbe con la facciata della chiesa de Santa Giustina de Padoa: si
discernavano quelli che entravano et uscivano di chiesa di San Giacomo di Muran; si vedevano le
persone a montar e dismontar de gondola at traghetto all a Collona nel principio del Rio de’ Verieri,
con molti altri particolari nella laguna et nella citta` veramente amirabili. E poi da lui presentato in
Collegio li 24 del medesimo, moltiplicando la vista con quello 9 volte piu`’ (‘August 21. I [Antonio
Priuli], Geronimo Priuli, Procurator of the Tower of St Marc, went with the excellent Mr. Galileo,
[…] and the excellent Dr. Cavalli to see the marvels and singular effects of the tube of the said
Galileo. It was made of tin, decorated on the outside with light red cotton satin, about three quarters
and ½ braccia long, the diameter of a scudo, with two glasses, one […] concave and the other not,
on each side. With it, looking with one eye while keeping the other shut, each of us saw distinctly
beyond Liza Fusina and Marghera, also Chioggia and Treviso and even Conegliano and the belltow-
er and […] the façade of the Church of Saint Giustina in Padova. We could see those entering and
exiting the Church of Saint Jacob in Murano, and the people who climbed on and off the gondole
at the ferry at the column near the beginning of the Rio de’ Verieri, and many other truly admirable
details in the lagon and the city. [This instrument] was then by him presented to the Senate on the
24th of the same month. It magnifies 9 times.’ (Galilei, Opere, 19 (1908), 587).
53
Rosen, ‘When Did Galileo Make His First Telescope?’ (1951), 50.
54
Galilei, Opere, 19 (1908): 23 June (158), 28 June (145, 165), 29 June (174), 6 July (197), 11 July
(145), 18 July (145, 166), 3 August (166), 10 August (166). The page numbers in parentheses refer
to the bookkeeping entry for the dates that precede them.
55
Enea Piccolomini to Galileo Galilei: ‘La gratissima di V.S. delli 3 di Luglio […]. Mi duole poi in
estremo della sua indisposizione […]’(‘The most welcome letter of Your Lordship of July 3 [...] It
pains me very much to hear of your health problems’). Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 254-255.
56
The first independent mention of Galileo’s telescope is Priuli’s ‘Cronaca’ entry for 21 August
1609, Galilei, Opere, 19 (1908), 587.
It is reported that the foreigner who came here with the secret [of the telescope], having
heard from I do not know whom (some say from Brother Paolo, the Servite theologian)
that he was not going to get anything by pretending 1,000 zecchini, he departed without
making any further effort. And therefore, being Brother Paolo and Galileo friends, and
having him given an account of the secret he had seen, people say that Galileo, through
his own reasoning and with the help of another similar instrument (but not a very good
one) from France, sought the secret and found it..57
57
Giovanni Bartoli to Belisario Vinta, 29 August 1609: Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 255.
58
Parenthetically, the last part of the report suggests the presence of two telescopes in Venice – one
inspected by Sarpi and a second (‘French’) instrument allegedly used (owned?) by Galileo.
59
Galileo Galilei a Giovanni Donato [Doge of Venice], 24 August 1609, Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900),
250-251; ‘Deliberazione del Senato,’ 25 August 1609, Galilei, Opere, 19 (1908), 115-116; ‘Ducale,’
Galilei, Opere, 19 (1908), 116-117.
60
Priuli, ‘Cronaca,’ in Galilei, Opere, 19 (1908), 587-588.
The manufacture of the spyglass known in Italy as Galileo’s (but invented in the
Netherlands) was discovered by him when [the instrument] was presented to the Doge
with a request of a 1,000-zecchini reward. Brother [Paolo] was put in charge of testing
its uses and give a report, but because he was not allowed to open it up and inspect it, he
guessed what he could. He then shared this with Mr. Galileo (who thought that Sarpi
had got it right), as well as with others.61
61
Fulgenzio Micanzio ‘Vita del Padre Paolo’: ‘L’occhiale, detto in Italia del Galileo, trovato in
Olanda, fu da lui [Galileo] penetrato l’artifizio quando, presentandone uno alla serenissima signoria
con dimanda di mille zecchini, fu al padre dato carico di far le prove a che potesse servire e dirne il
suo giudizio; e perche’ non gl’era lecito aprirlo e vedere, imagino` cio` che potesse, e lo conferi’ col
signor Galileo, che trovo` il padre aver dato nel segno; e tanti altri,’ in: Sarpi, Istoria del concilio
tridentino, 2 (1974), 1372-1373.
62
A recent book by Filippo de Vivo mentions a Giovanni Bartoli – a lawyer active in Venice in
this exact period – connected to Sarpi’s unorthodox religious networks and its nodes, including the
‘Golden Ship’ (De Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice (2008), 125. The Golden Ship
was the shop of Bernardo Sechini, where Sarpi, Galileo, Acquapendente, and Asselinau regularly
convened. (Favaro, ‘Galileo e Venezia,’ 2 (1966), 87).
63
Favaro, ‘Il telescopio’ (1883/1966), 268.
64
Willach, The Long Route (2008), part 5.
65
Van Helden, ‘Galileo and the Telescope,’ this volume.
66
Biagioli, Galileo’s Instruments of Credit (2006), 116, 120.
67
Drake, ‘Galileo’s First Telescopes at Padua and Venice’ (1959), 250-note 15.
68
‘Finally, at the suggestion of one of my friendly patrons, I presented it to the ruler in a in a full
meeting of the Council.’ (Galileo, The Assayer, cited in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 52). It is pos-
sible that the ‘patron’ mentioned here was Sarpi.
69
This fit the logic (and ethics) of early modern patent law, as first promoted and then articulated
in Venice.
70
Based on other letters, we know that Venice was quickly becoming populated with more tele-
scopes in August, suggesting that Galileo may have seen or heard about other telescopes as well, as
suggested by Bartoli’s report of 22 August.
Conclusion
These last remarks are hypotheses that we may be able to test in the future, if
new documents surface. Still, the fact that Sarpi’s letter to Castrino has been
hiding in plain sight for almost two centuries suggests that we may not have
asked all the questions we could have. In particular, we have been too eager to
accept Galileo’s narratives as descriptions rather than discursive instruments.
Sarpi’s letter has brought up some of the chronological and empirical prob-
lems in these narratives, but one can find other tensions as well. Consider, for
instance, Galileo’s predicament in the narrative of invention he presented in
The Assayer.
In it, Galileo is caught between rebuffing Grassi’s accusation that the tele-
scope was not his child but only his pupil, while also having to acknowledge
that the telescope did have a Dutch father already. This would not have been
a problem in the economy of inventions, where there could be as many inven-
tors of the telescope as there were countries. Claiming local (that is, Venetian)
inventorship of the telescope would have allowed Galileo to acknowledge ex-
tensive borrowings from foreign inventors (as they had no relevance for that
definition of inventorship). But Galileo, trying to develop the right profile for
71
Galileo, The Assayer, cited in: Van Helden, Invention (1977), 52.
72
It would seem, in any case, that those ‘same friends in Venice’ mentioned by Galileo must have
been very few and quite tight-lipped to account for the ‘media silence’ over Galileo’s telescope for
the six weeks until the test on 21 August witnessed by Priuli.
73
Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 250; Ibidem, 19 (1908), 587.
Introduction
The first documented public presentation of the telescope in 1608 by Hans
Lipperhey in the Netherlands displayed the instrument’s potential both for
long-distance surveillance and for seeing stars not visible to the naked eye.
As is well known, within the next year, at least six users observed the heavens
before Galileo Galilei made his significant astronomical discoveries and dem-
onstrated the potential economic benefits for those watching ships arriving in
port. Indeed, the device soon spread throughout Europe and into Asia.1
Scant evidence survives on the extent of early telescope production, but nu-
merous references to the appearance of this device at book fairs and merchant
stalls shortly after Lipperhey’s demonstration suggest that many hundreds, if
not many thousands, were produced prior to 1650. In his important paper
on the development of telescope optics in the early seventeenth century, Rolf
Willach provided a census of known surviving telescopes made before 1650
(and largely) with still intact optics.2 Surprisingly, this well-researched list in-
cluded only eight examples, summarized below with their current locations,
ordered as in Willach’s article:
1
Details of the new device, its first users, and its quick dissemination appear in Zoomers &
Zuidervaart, Embassies (2008); Sluiter, ‘The Telescope before Galileo’ (1997) and Sluiter, ‘The First
Known Telescopes’ (1997).
2
Willach, ‘The Development of Telescope Optics’ (2001).
The search
Why should we look for additional examples, and where? The current small
sample size makes it difficult to assess rhetorical or other claims about the pow-
er of the new instrument or to confirm oft-repeated generalizations about its
early history and development. Much remains to be learned about the grind-
ing and polishing of lenses, the overall shape and form of the telescope itself,
its materials, and its decorative elements. None of these questions have canoni-
cal, a priori answers. Broader issues loom. Who could get access to such an
instrument? How might its possession or craftsmanship demonstrate prestige
or status, perhaps associated with patronage or natural philosophy?3
The authors have begun a project to advance our ability to understand such
issues by locating unknown early telescopes, systematically investigating both
these and previously known instruments, and compiling visual and literary
images of early telescopes. This artefact-based project has several components:
evaluating existing information; conducting a preliminary investigation of items
identified; documenting them thoroughly with photographs and precise mea-
surements of key optical and physical characteristics; identifying materials, de-
tails, and, as possible, recorded provenance peculiar to each instrument; and
making these data available on an important, well-known institutional website.
Our purpose is to provide access to evidence concerning the evolution,
distribution and social significance of the telescope. Such data will enable
3
Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier (1993) provides extensive details of the intricacies of patronage.
4
For an analysis of the Dresden telescopes, see Dupré and Korey, ‘Optical Objects’ (2009). The
role of the Jesuit dissemination of the telescope was discussed by Henrique Leitao in his presenta-
tion ‘G.P. Lembo’s lecture notes on the telescope in Lisbon, 1615-1617’ at The Invention of the
Dutch Telescope: Its Origin and Impact on Science, Culture, and Society, 1550-1650 in Middelburg
27 September 2008.
Results
As of April 2009, we have located several good candidates to expand Willach’s
2001 list, from both public and private collections. The first, and likely most
important one, No. 9 below, comes from the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum
of Decorative Arts) in Dresden. The second, No. 19, is in the Astronomisch-
Physikalisches Kabinett in Kassel; additional investigation of its optics and
its decorative tooling is still needed in order to confirm the dating, which
is based largely on the macroscopic form of its uniform-diameter cylindrical
shape. News of an early instrument from Japan comes from Tsuko Nakamura;
archival evidence indicates the pre-1650 dating of this intriguing instrument
(No. 18). Four examples (No. 8, 11, 12, 13) belong to the Peter Louwman
Collection of Historic Telescopes. Two telescopes (No. 3 and 7) come from a
Swiss private collection; the first of these is a leather-covered pasteboard tele-
scope, complete with end caps, whereas the second is a cylindrical metal tube.
Further investigation of the optics of both is still needed in order to bolster
the dating. Finally, in March 2009, we became aware of another candidate in
a European private collection.
5
A pioneering study in the context of English instruments is Turner, ‘Decorative Tooling’ (1966).
Consisting of a main tube and five draw tubes made of pasteboard, this beauti-
ful instrument extends to some 927 mm. Each draw is covered in marbled pa-
per, with the main tube and rings at the end of each draw covered in silk velvet
and embellished with gold-thread needlework. With the draws collapsed, the
rings and main tube form a cylinder – that is, the rings of varying inner diam-
eter have a common outer diameter (48 mm), a distinctive feature of several
other telescopes found on this list; cf. 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 17, 19, 20 and 21.7
6
Willach, ‘The Development of Telescope Optics’ (2001).
7
That this is a common characteristic of early telescopes seems first to have been noted by Inge Keil
in Augustanus (2000), 276f., and by Rolf Willach in ‘The Development of Telescope Optics’ (2001).
Confirmation comes from inspection of the instruments listed in this paper, as well as from numer-
ous early illustrations of telescopes, as well as paintings.
8
Riekher, Fernrohre (1990), 47. We thank Rolf Riekher for sharing with us with his insights and
meticulous optical measurements, as well as for many stimulating conversations.
9
Keil, Augustanus (2000).
10
Lessing and Brüning, Kunstschrank (1905); Mundt, Kunstschrank (2009), 177 f.
Ascription of the maker comes from the initials ‘PD’ embedded in a ‘fish-
skeleton’ form tooled with gold leaf on the main tube, which is mostly covered
with brown leather. Each of the four cardboard draws is covered in blue and
pink marbled paper, largely faded on the halves of the tube that are usually
drawn out. When collapsed, the telescope forms a cylinder, enclosed by the
surviving end caps.
The telescope has Galilean optics, the bi-convex objective of 23 mm having
a free aperture of 19 mm. Typical of early lenses, this objective features nu-
merous bubbles and is not polished around the edges. The eyepiece is plano-
concave. The combination yields an upright image magnified 14 times.
More information is needed about Dujardin. Current best indications are
that he lived from 1594-1645. Few instruments of his survive, but those (all
non-optical) are dated from 1614 to 1645. A diptych dial ascribed to Dujardin
at the Adler Planetarium (M-257) is marked ‘16_7’ and dated to 1627, but the
11
Ibidem, 39: ‘ain tubus oder helioscopion, von dem Galilaeo Galilaejs, mit seinen Zaichen zu
kurtzem und weitem absehen gerichtet welches doch Ihm ieder, nach seinem kurtzen und weiten
Gesicht, und nach seim alter auch selbs accomodiren, und sonderlich die gläser ieder zeit sauber
halten muß, und ie weiter man darmit sehen will, ihe dienliche es ainem wenigst auf 3. meil wegs
gerichtet ist.'
12
Willach, ‘Telescope Optics’ (2001), 383-385. We thank Rolf Willach for extensive tutoring using
his marvelous collection, and for many of the details on this and other instruments.
Made of cardboard, with a main tube and three draws; many indicators point
to an early date. Galilean optics provide an upright image. The objective is
stopped down about 50%, off-centre, to 29 mm. Additional investigation of
the optics and instrument is needed to confirm its dating.
4. Before 1626: Heinrich Stolle, Prague, Czech Republic; British Museum, London,
England (1890,0209.2).
5. 1610-30: Galileo (?), Italy; Museum of the History of Science, Florence, Italy
(2428).
13
Willach, ‘The Development of Lens Grinding’ (2001); Riekher, Fernrohre (1990), 46; Ward,
A Catalogue (1981); a partial listing of other instruments by Stolle is in Zinner, Astronomische
Instrumente (1956), 545. Fischer, ‘Uhrmacher’ (1966), 54, indicates that Stolle worked indepen-
dently from 1616, after his apprenticeship to Bürgi. We thank Liz Gatti and Silke Ackermann of
the British Museum for information from the object file on this instrument. The date of Stolle’s
death (and hence the terminus ante quem for this telescope) is given as c. 1626 in Haupt, Fürst Karl
I, 1:1 (1983), 67 and 1:2 (1983), 338; Stolle was listed in 1623 as the court clock maker to Karl I of
Liechtenstein, and Stolle’s widow is known to have received payment for work done by him in 1626
and 1627. We are most grateful to John Leopold for communicating this latter information to us.
14
Van Helden, Catalogue (1999), 30-31. We thank Giorgio Strano for providing us with the cor-
rected length of this telescope and no. 6, below. As pointed out in Strano, ‘Lista’ (2009), Willach’s
optical argument doubting the authenticity of this and the subsequent telescope is logically correct,
but based on the false length measurements given in Van Helden, Catalogue (1999) and is thus
moot.
15
Strano, Galileo’s Telescope (2008), 136.
16
Abetti, ‘cannocchiali’ (1923); Ronchi, ‘cannocchiali’ (1923); Greco, Molesini, and Quercioli,
‘Optical tests’ (1992); Mandò et al., ‘Quality’ (2008).
The main tube, 1273 ± 1 mm long, consists of two semi-circular wooden half-
pipes bound together by copper wire in two places. It tapers from a maximal
diameter of 50 mm at the objective end to 40 mm toward the ocular end. At
both ends, a wooden tube insert holds a lens and provides modest capacity for
adjustment. The 51 mm bi-convex objective stops down to 26 mm; in combi-
nation with the 26 mm (diameter) plano-concave ocular, it yields a magnifica-
tion of about 14 times.
Handwriting consistent with that of Galileo and expressing a length in
Paduan units on paper forming part of the upper layer at the end of the main
tube was discovered during a recent conservation project. This discovery sug-
gests the tantalizing possibility that the telescope dates from Galileo’s time in
Padua (1609-1610), though the ascription or connection to Galileo is not se-
cure.17 Although the provenances of the Galileo telescopes are not secure, that
of the broken Galileo objective is quite convincing.
Two brass pieces, soldered together, extend just over 1.000 mm. Each brass
component shows its seam along its entire length, and is free of ornamen-
tation. The ivory-mounted objective combines with a compound eyepiece
mounted in a cardboard tube that nestles into a brass tube, which adjusts for
focusing. Further study of this instrument is needed.
17
Van Helden, Catalogue (1999), 32-33.
Made of cardboard, covered on the two draws with marbled paper and on
the main tube with elaborately gold-tooled leather, each tube measures about
200 mm and extends to 480 mm. The ivory rings, and cells for the missing
optics, add to the beauty of this small Galilean telescope. The finely preserved
tooling and marbling may yield additional information. Zuidervaart notes that
the shape of these ivory rings resembles the shapes on the elaborately mounted
broken Galileo lens made by Vittorio Crosten in 1677 (now in Florence as
IMSS 2429 along with telescopes No. 5 and 6). He has also observed that
a similar example is in the collection of the Luxottica Museum in Agordo
(Italy).19
Study of the telescope from the Pommerscher Kunstschrank (No. 1, above) led
the authors to consider whether another Kunstschrank or similarly complex
piece of upper-end furniture might have a telescope associated with it.20 This
led to the identification of a collapsible desk-table at the Kunstgewerbemuseum
(Museum of Decorative Arts) in Pillnitz, near Dresden, which had been as-
18
Our thanks go to Peter Louwman for providing us with generous access to his collection, and
permission to publish photos of several of his telescopes.
19
A brief description appears in Cocquyt, 400 Years of Telescopes (2008), No. 3. Further details
are derived from Huib Zuidervaart’s unpublished catalogue of the Louwman Collection of Historic
Telescopes (2008). We gratefully acknowledge his granting us access to this catalogue. See Van
Helden, Catalogue (1999), 13, 32, 33 and Del Vecchio, In View (1995), 52-53.
20
Cf. Hauschke, ‘Scientific Instruments’ (2006), for instruments in this context.
21
Note that it was not possible to remove the second draw, but extrapolating from the lengths of the
main tube and the first and third draws, the total length of this instrument was surely long enough
to accommodate the requisite separation of the two lenses, namely 932 mm = 1010 mm – 78 mm.
22
That is, if these attributions are correct. A 1636 inventory of the contents of the Jagd- und
Werkzeugtisch is preserved in the Armoury (Rüstkammer) in Dresden – see Eichhorn,
‘Kunstkammertische.’ By contrast, no seventeenth-century inventory of the contents of the
Arbeitstisch is currently known; the first such inventory is from 1741, which includes an entry for
the telescope, describing it simply as a ‘perspectiv’ on fol. 132v.
23
For the contents of the Arbeitstisch see Haase, ‘Catalogue entry’ (1981); for more on such
Hainhofer pieces, see Heikamp, ‘Reisemöbel’ (1966). For the Electress’s own Kunstkammer, her
patronage of the arts and her contacts with Hainhofer, see most recently Peschel, ‘Kurfürstinnen’
(2000). There still remain many open questions regarding these pieces of furniture, their dating,
ownership and contents. For example, Heikamp cites correspondence showing Hainhofer’s diffi-
culty in finding a buyer for several of his cabinets, which caused him to offer them to a number of
prospective buyers. In this light, the Arbeitstisch or at least some of its contents may not originally
have been intended for the Saxon Electress; we note, for example, that the perpetual calendar on
a rod in the back of the folding chair is Gregorian (with 21 March for the vernal equinox), a fact
which – if noticed – might well have been seen as an affront to the then (still adamantly Julian)
Saxon court.
24
The 1741 inventory of the Electoral Kunstkammer in Dresden lists a ‘printed and illuminat-
ed calendar from 1628’ on fol. 132v. In describing a calendar contained within the Hainhofer
Kunstschrank now in Uppsala, Böttiger drew a parallel to the Dresden Arbeitstisch, mentioning that
it also held an almanac by Georg Galgenmeyer for 1628 – see Böttiger, Kunstschrank, 3 (1910), 22
(nr. 15). Alas, no such calendar is preserved in the collections in Dresden and Pillnitz.
10. c. 1630-1640:
unknown maker, Italy; Adler Planetarium, Chicago, USA (M-
421).
All tubes consist of cardboard, with the five draws covered with plain paper,
the main tube with red, tanned, gold-tooled leather; decorations include birds,
flames, flowers and other designs. (A smaller Galilean style telescope in the
Willach Collection has similar, but mirror-imaged tooling.) The aperture disk
is also gold tooled. The main tube is distinctly (and linearly) tapered towards
eyepiece end. The leather ferrules or rings are built up on successive draws;
these rings form a cylindrical shape.
The bi-convex objective glass shows numerous bubbles and striations, and
is marked with an ‘X’ on the ocular side. It has a focal length of 730 mm,
and is stopped down from 63 mm to 27 mm. Like other early lenses, it is not
polished but broken around the edge. The original ocular is missing, replaced
25
For example, the Hainhofer Kunstschrank in Uppsala contains a flea glass, a pair of faceted
(‘vexier’) eyeglasses, and a paperweight in the form of a prism; an analogous object in the collection
of Duchess Sophia Elisabeth of Braunschweig is described in 1636 as ‘a 3-sided glass, with which
to refresh the eyes, around and about which one can see rainbows, as well as to be used to weigh
down letters on a table’ – cf. Böttiger, Kunstschrank, 3 (1910),, 21 (nr. 12). See also Dupré & Korey,
‘Optical objects’ (2009).
11. 1625-1650
(?): unknown maker; Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes,
Wassenaar, The Netherlands.
The main tube and single draw, each made of tin plate, measure about 160 mm
and 180 mm, respectively. The main tube and draw ring are of the same di-
ameter and covered in blind-stamped calf leather with simple tooling. The
telescope extends from 200 mm to 290 mm. Handwriting on the leather, now
nearly invisible to the naked eye, may refer to an earlier owner. Under infrared
photography the ink does not appear to contain carbon, so that the signature
remains invisible; innovative imaging techniques may provide further infor-
mation. The old objective lens, a replacement, and plano-concave ocular are
both of low quality, yielding a very poor image.27
26
A list of known trumpet-shaped telescopes appears in Bolt & Korey, ‘Trumpeting the Tube’
(2007). Our thanks go to Edward Hirschland for drawing our attention to the Guercino painting.
27
Rolf Willach (personal communication) has determined the focal length of the objective to be
c. 650 mm (and that of the ocular c. 50 mm), so that the maximal length of the tubes is far too short
for this pair of lenses to have yielded a working Galilean telescope.
13. 1625-1650 (?): unknown maker, France (?); Louwman Collection of Historic
Telescopes, Wassenaar, The Netherlands.
With a total length of 210 mm, this very thin ivory telescope features longi-
tudinal turning/fluting. The main tube, measuring about 130 mm, has four
sections, and tapers from 22 mm to 18 mm. The single draw is half-covered
with marbled paper towards the objective end. Both ivory end caps survive.
Although the original ocular does not survive, the asymmetrically bi-convex
objective is likely original. Its yellow-green colour and numerous small bub-
bles, as well as the Ronchi test performed on it, reveal consistency with period
lenses, as do its unpolished edges. The objective’s focal length of 274 mm, in
28
A brief description appears in Cocquyt, 400 Years (2008), no. 1. The stylistic comparison is due
to Zuidervaart (note 19).
13. before
1632: unknown maker; Livrustkammaren, Stockholm, Sweden (202).
14. Before
1632: unknown maker; Livrustkammaren, Stockholm, Sweden (9956,
formerly 06/4145).
29
We thank Rolf Willach for his measurements of this instrument in 1999. A brief description ap-
pears in Cocquyt, 400 Years, No. 31, with further information from Huib Zuidervaart. This example
is described and illustrated along with other ivory telescopes in Talbot, ‘Telescopes: Perspicillum’
(2008).
30
We thank Nils Drejholt for the physical description and provenance information and Rolf
Willach for the optical measurements.
15. 1630-1635
(?): unknown maker, France or Italy; State Hermitage Museum,
St Petersburg, Russia (TX-891).
31
Lindblad, ‘äldre fältkikare’ (1939), 216ff. Willach provided us with the variant values of 770 mm
for the length, 810 mm for the objective focal length and 40 mm for the ocular focal length, leading
to a magnification of c. 20 times.
32
A basic entry on this telescope is in Majstrov, Naučnye (1968), 67, nr. 3 and Ill. 131. Our main
source has been personal communication with Gassendi authority Anthony Turner, whose assistance
we gratefully acknowledge.
16. c. 1645 (?): unknown maker, Rome, Italy; Museo di Monte Mario, Rome,
Italy.
17. 1645-1650
(?): unknown maker, Japan; Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya,
Japan.
We also acknowledge the assistance of Inge Keil in Augsburg, who told us that the late Nina
33
Newskaja had reported a possible link to Joseph-Nicolas Delisle during a visit to the Hermitage in
1993, and to Grigory Yastrebinsky, curator at the Hermitage.
18. c.
1650 (?): unknown maker; Astronomisch-Physikalisches Kabinett, Museums-
landschaft Hessen Kassel, Kassel, Germany (F. 265).
The main tube and the first two of three draws each measure about 150 mm;
the final draw runs 170 mm. Extension marks indicate a usable length of
585 mm, consistent with the current original objective. The main tube and
draw ferrules are covered with simple gold-tooled brown leather, whereas
the draws are covered with plain brown paper.35 When collapsed, the succes-
sively larger ferrules of the smaller draws form the cylindrical shape specific
to early telescopes. The main tube has a diameter of 32 mm. The Galilean
optics provide a characteristically small field of view. The objective is stopped
34
Nakamura, ‘The earliest telescope preserved in Japan’ (2008).
35
Konrad Wiedemann of the Manuscript Division of the Murhardsche Bibliothek, Kassel, notes
that combination of zigzag lines and lilies within the tooling on the main tube is datable on book
bindings beginning in the middle of the seventeenth century – we thank Friedrich Trier of the
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel for relaying this information, as well as for the estimated magni-
fication of the telescope.
19. c.
1650: Johann Wiesel, Augsburg, Germany; Skokloster Slott, Sweden
(10643).
This telescope features an incredible eleven tubes: the main tube is covered
with gold-tooled leather and each of the ten inner draws with marbled paper
(possibly by Wiesel himself, as Keil suggests). The outer tube bears the tooled
signature ‘I. W. A. O. F.’ in one line (read as ‘Ioanne Wiesel Augustanus opticus
fecit’). The lenses are missing. According to Willach’s reconstruction, based on
the position markings on each draw tube and contemporary analogies and cor-
respondence, this terrestrial telescope had an objective and a four-lens erecting
eyepiece (making unlikely its dating much before 1645, the year of Schyrle de
Rheita’s publication of the terrestrial telescope and his reference to Wiesel as its
competent maker). In this reconstruction, the eyepiece consisted of a field lens
of focal length 85 mm, an erecting lens of focal length 170 mm, and two eye
lenses of focal lengths 340 mm and 140 mm, respectively. The resulting total
focal length of the eyepiece was 69 mm, leading to a magnification of c. 28
times. The telescope has the form of a ‘reverse taper,’ meaning that the objec-
tive was mounted in the draw of smallest diameter. Adjustment markings on
this smallest draw indicate focusing possibilities for four eye strengths. Length
690 mm when contracted, 2650 mm extended. A cap on the outer tube has a
concave eye cup with a 9 mm diameter opening.
Since the mid-seventeenth century, this telescope and its companion, No.
21 below, the only two known surviving telescopes by Wiesel, have been at
Skokloster Castle near Uppsala, the estate of Field Marshal Carl Gustav Wrangel
36
Interestingly, the 1765 inventory entry seems to record the presence of an alternative ocular: ‘A
tube with two lenses and four [total] draws covered in brown, gilt leather. Additionally a black etui,
in which another ocular glass is to be found’ (‘Ein Tubus mit 2 Gläsern und vier Zügen mit braun
verguldetem Leder überzogen. Nebst einem schwartzen Futeral, worinnen noch ein Okular-Glas
befindlich ist‘). We thank Karsten Gaulke for providing us with this information, as well as the
caution (with Friedrich Trier) that the post-Seven Years’ War grouping of objects within the 1765
inventory is not always reliable.
20. c. 1650: Johann Wiesel, Augsburg, Germany; Skokloster Slott, Sweden (10641;
case 10642)
Other candidates
From our own preliminary and very brief investigation of telescopes surviving
in Beijing’s Forbidden City, we can identify three categories of instruments
there: 1) telescopes made in Europe in a European style; 2) telescopes made in
Europe decorated in a putative Chinese style; and 3) telescopes made in China
by artisans belonging to the Chinese imperial court. Curatorial investigation
of examples of each of these three categories has provided tantalizing sug-
gestions on the transmission of telescope technology and aesthetics not only
between the West and China but also between China and Japan, as well as the
possibility of early telescopes made in China still surviving there.
In March 2009, we received notice of a private collector in Italy who owns
a telescope with provenance going back to at least the 1640s. It was not pos-
sible to confirm this report prior to publication, nor to investigate the four
Torricelli lenses held in Florence and Naples.
37
Keil, Augustanus (2000), 114f., 241-243, 295-306, esp. 301f., 436 and figs. 15, 16, 30-35; Willach,
‘Telescopic Optics’ (2001), 390-395 and Willach, ‘Skokloster’ (2002).
Future information-gathering
The telescope became widely known and reached its iconic status despite suf-
fering from two shortcomings: first, the unavailability of high quality opti-
cal glass, and, second, the physical deficiencies inherent in spherically curved
lenses (the only shape then readily available). As Van Helden has noted, after
the initial flurry of discoveries, it wasn’t until the invention of the compound
eyepiece around 1645 that a new wave of discoveries took place.39 Perhaps the
rarity of earlier surviving telescopes stems partly from their obsolescence once
the new and improved telescope became available.
We have identified about two dozen institutions and private collections
whose representatives have agreed to provide us with access to their collections
for studying telescopes made prior to 1750. We continue to seek additional
institutions and collections with candidate instruments. Only by investigat-
ing many artefacts now scattered throughout these collections can we sample
enough historic artefacts to provide sufficient evidence about their evolution.
Whereas photographs of many of these telescopes or images exist, physical
examination of artefacts is essential to confirm data accuracy, to provide con-
sistency, and in many cases to investigate optical features.
We have developed a standardized approach for cataloguing, photograph-
ing, and conducting optical measurements of each telescope under review. As
the telescope is (carefully) disassembled, we identify the materials, coverings,
structures, and other physical details peculiar to each instrument, and include
this information in our database. Experience indicates that careful investiga-
tion even of previously catalogued instruments often reveals additional infor-
mation.
38
Rudd, ‘Twin telescopes from the Mid-Seventeenth Century’ (2005).
39
Van Helden, ‘The Development of Compound Eyepieces’ (1977).
‘15th June 1635. I have ground a glass and polished it on my metal form in this way:
On one side as I was accustomed to do, but on the other side I constantly put my
fingers on the left and the right side; not in the middle, nor above or below. And there
where my fingers applied pressure, it [the glass] first began to become clear, while I
ground the very thin glass without a cap. But I ground it until it became evenly clear
all over, always keeping my fingers on the same places, causing those places to be
most abraded and therefore thinner than above and below, where my fingers did not
touch’.1
Introduction
Clearly, a skilled lens grinder was at work on the 15th of June 1635. His name
was Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637) and he was the rector of the Latin school in
Dordrecht. He had acquired the art of lens grinding during the previous few
years and he had become quite skilled at making lenses. The quote is from the
journal he kept over some thirty years. The entry continues in an interesting
way.
Then, putting this glass in a hole in the window of my dark office (so that the regions
where no pressure had been applied were below and above while the regions where
pressure had been applied were on the sides) thus the erecta (which are the things that
stand upright) outside in the air projected through the glass on the paper, appeared
1
De Waard, Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman, 3 (1945), 422: ‘15en Junij 1635 hebbe ick een glasken
geslepen ende gepolyst op myn metalen becken in deser voeghe: Aen d’een syde gelyck ick gewoon
was, maer aen d’ander syde stelde ick geduerich myn vynghers op de slyncker ende rechterkant; in
de midden noch boven noch onder niet, also dat daer myn vyngers douwden, het eerst begon klaer
te worden, dewyle ick sonder dop sleep ende het glasken was seer dunne. Doch ick sleep so langhe
totdat het allom even klaer wert, de vyngers altyt op deselfde plaetsen houdende, waerdeur gebeurt
is dat die plaetskens meest geschuert syn geweest ende daerom dunder dan onder ende boven, daer
de vyngers niet en rochten’.
After grinding his lens, Beeckman tested its performance and properties.
This is something one rarely finds in seventeenth-century writings on lenses.
Even in private notes, considerations of the actual quality of lenses are rare.
The particular way in which he assessed this lens is interesting too, using a
camera obscura-like setting. The quote shows that Beeckman was an acute
observer. There is still more, the journal entry continues:
From which it transpires that the concursûs radiorum comes closer or nearer as more
or less pressure is applied to the glass here or there, and that in this way, one can make
all the rays gather with the middle [ray] in one point, as if it [the surface of the glass]
was a hyperbola...3
2
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 422: ‘Dit glasken dan stellende int gat van den veynster
van myn doncker kantoor (also dat de plaetskens, die niet gedouwt en waren, onder ende boven
stonden ende de gedouwde ter syden) so schenen de erecta (dat is t’gene dat recht overeynde stondt)
buyten in de locht door het glasken opt pampier kommende, klaerder alsmen het pampier wat
naerder het glasken brocht ende de transversa schenen klaerder als men het pampier verder af hielt.
Hetwelcke soveel scheelde dat men het pampier naby houdende, de erecta alleen sach, alsoffer geen
transversa en waren; ende verder afhoudende, sach men de transversa alleen. Hetgene ick sach was
een yser op een gevel van een huys recht overeynde staende met 2 of 3 yserkens dweers horisontaliter
daerdoor gaende, kruyswys’.
3
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 423: ‘Waeruyt blyckt dat de concursûs radiorum verder
of naderby kommen naerdat het glas hier of daer meer of min gedouwt is, ende dat men so doende,
alle de radij met de middelste in één punt kan doen vergaderen, gelyck of t’een hyperbool ware, die
hier paste. Ick bevont oock in dese actie, als ick de syde vant glasken, dat so extraordinair geslepen
was, na buyten toe stelde, so scheen hetgene ick nu geseydt hebbe, alderbescheelickst. Men moet
weten dat hetgene lanck ende smal synde, opt pampier gesien wort, sich aldermeest verliest als het
inde smalte sich verspreydt. Daerom het glas so staende dat het aen weersyden dunst was, so quam
het vergaerpunt deur die syden verder af, waerdeur de erecta, verspreydt werdende, verdwenen. Aut
contra’.
4
Hyperbolic and other conical shapes were a promise to perfect lenses that was much sought after
in the seventeenth century. Except for some possible incidental successes it did not work in practice.
For an informative, though not entirely flawless account see: Burnett, Hyperbolic Quest (2005).
5
On Beeckman’s natural philosophy, see Van Berkel, Beeckman (1983); Van Berkel, ‘Descartes’
Debt to Beeckman’ (2000) and Schuster, ‘Descartes Opticien’ (2000), 291-295. De Waard’s ‘Notes
sure le rodage et le polissage des verres’ are printed in De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), sepa-
rately numbered between page 369 and 371.
Ready-mades
Beeckman’s early notes on optics mainly concerned vision, in which he com-
bined all kinds of observations with dioptrical analyses and ideas on the nature
of light. As early as 1617, he discussed the topic of myopia, later correct-
ing Franciscus Aguilonius (1567-1617) on the matter and chastising Francis
Bacon (1561-1626) for not understanding it. Later in his life he became myo-
pic himself, as a result, he thought, of his compulsive reading. The issue of
judging distance with a single eye occupied him very much. He had come to
the conclusion that the image of an object on the retina was characterized by
the breadth of a pencil of rays and the number of rays, and that the eye was
able to detect these. Typical is the way in which Beeckman unflaggingly used
original observations as a starting point for imaginative reflections on their
causes. Early 1630 he wrote that he was sitting in church and watching the
stained-glass windows. He noticed how the perspective of vertical lines was af-
fected when one glances right under the brim of one’s hat. This knowledge of
visual perception seeped into his dealings with lenses.7
6
For the life and work of Beeckman, see Berkel, Beeckman (1983).
7
On myopia, see De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 1 (1939), 112; 2 (1941), 377; 3 (1945), 63; 221. On
judging distance, see Beeckman, Journal, 1 (1939), 315-6; 2 (1941), 213; 231-239. The observation
in church is in De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 146.
8
On Metius, see Zuidervaart’s contribution in this volume.
9
On the history of lens-making and Lipperhey, see the contributions of Willach and Molesini to
this volume. See also Willach, ‘Lange Weg’ (2007), 103-104; 109-113; Ilardi, Renaissance Vision
(2005), 224-235; Bedini, ‘Lens Making’ (1966).
I found that the gathering point was so large, that one could not bring it to perfection,
because it was as much larger than the gathering points of other glasses as the glass was
larger than the other glasses.12
The occasion of his recollection was a visit, on 24 June 1624 to The Hague,
where he bought a ‘burning glass’. He described an original way of determin-
ing the position of its focus by burning a hole in a piece of paper. The focus of
the newly procured glass was further from the lens than was the case with small
glasses, but it was also much larger. This led him to ask the grinder to make
a glass with a long focal distance but a small gathering point, ‘hoping by this
means to get to my intended telescope’. The grinder, however, answered that
this was not possible for anyone in the world.13
Artisans were somewhat of an obstacle for Beeckman’s inventiveness. Four
years later, in 1628, he thought of a way to determine whether an ocular glass
10
On the Middelburg glassworks see Hudig, Glas (1923), 22-28. On the development of the Dutch
glass industry, see Davids, ‘Beginning Entrepreneurs’ (2005), 169.
11
On Beeckman’s lens, see De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 2 (1941), 209-211. On Sirtori, see De
Waard, Journal Beeckman, 1 (1939), 208.
12
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 2 (1941), 295: ‘ick bevondt dat dit vergaerpunt so groot was, dat
men t tot gheen perfectie en konde brenghen, want het was wel sooveel grooter als de vergaerpunten
van andere glasen, als het glas grooter was dan andere glasen’.
13
The report of the visit to The Hague is in De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 2 (1941), 295-296. The
quote is on page 295: ‘hopende daerdoor tot mynen voorgenommenen verrekyker te geraken’.
was too concave or flat for an objective. He covered the centre with a piece
of paper to find out how much the telescope needed to be adjusted. The cur-
vature of the ocular should fit the curvature of the objective to make a good
telescope and according to him, the diaphragm used to remedy aberrations
hid the actual defects of a telescope (cf. ill. 1). Somewhat later he asked a local
spectacle maker to find an objective lens for the ocular he had, but the artisan
replied that this would be a hopeless enterprise for he would have to test in-
numerable glasses.14
By this time Beeckman was living in Dordrecht, where he had found a po-
sition as rector of the Latin school. Until then, he had not made lenses himself
but now he was actively engaged with them, combining book reading and
discussions with artisans with observations and considerations of his own.
Homemades
Somewhere in late 1631 or early 1632 Beeckman began grinding his own lens-
es. In the journal we find a growing attention to lenses, starting with a read-
ing of Scheiner’s Disquisitiones Mathematicae De Controversis et Novitatibus
Astronomicis (1614), ideas to read letters over long distances with two convex
On assessing the curvature of lenses, see De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 46-47. The lens
14
maker’s reaction is in Ibidem, 69. On the grinding machines of Huygens, see Dijksterhuis, Lenses
and Waves (2004), 57-63.
15
The topics mentioned are in De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 228-233. Beeckman in
October 1633 first mentioned Scheiner’s Rosa Ursina (1630), a main point of reference for seven-
teenth-century telescopists which contained a Keplerian configuration.
16
On Beeckman’s observatory, see Van Berkel, Beeckman (1983), 104-105.
17
On Golius, see De Waard, ‘Manuscript perdu’ (1935), 53-54. On Descartes’s project, see
Dijksterhuis, ‘Constructive thinking’ (2007), 65-67. On Colvius, see Van Berkel, Beeckman (1983),
112-115.
minister in Cologne, told him of the grinding methods of his colleague Johan
Moriaen (c. 1591-1668), who was also trained as lens maker. A couple of
years later, Moriaen travelled to the Republic and visited Beeckman. They
exchanged tricks of the trade.18
After Beeckman had begun grinding his own lenses his journal brims with
detailed descriptions and inventive ideas. I will indicate a few of the most
prominent themes. In the first place the method of grinding by means of a rod.
The journal contains many detailed instructions and over time Beeckman de-
vised all kinds of variants. This all was aimed at acquiring a constant and even
pressure during the grinding. Notes on a conversation on globe making with
Willem Jansz Blaeu (1571-1638), suggest that the use of the rod was inspired
by the methods of mirror makers (ill. 2). A crucial issue was grinding the lenses
evenly, particularly preventing the edges from being abraded too quickly. This,
as we have already seen, at the same time suggested ways to make aspherical
lenses.19
There is also much talk about the materials used. A smith tells him which
iron is best for making forms. Beeckman explains how to select the best pieces
of glass for making a lens. What material to use for grinding and polishing:
types of sand, leather and cloth. Typical for Beeckman is that he linked such
considerations to his ideas about the mechanical nature of things. In February
18
On transfer of technology see Davids, Rise and Decline (2008), 204-207; 229-230; 238-243. On
Moriaen see De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 300-302; 380-381.
19
On grinding rods, see passages in De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 242-252; 255-260;
261-264. The conversation with Bleau is in Ibidem, 263-264. On aspherical lenses, see: Ibidem, 375
and 384.
20
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 374: ‘ergo schynt dat men de asperitaten vant glas door
het polysten afscropt of afvryft, gelyck het laken van drooghscheerders geschoren wort’. On using
iron for forms, see Ibidem, 233-232. On the selection of glass, see Ibidem, 300-301.
21
Methods for inspecting lenses are discussed in De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 258; 296;
299; 373; 387; 397. On the slanted lens, see Ibidem, 260. On the thickness and focal distance of
lenses, see Ibidem, 258.
The servant, who showed me, was always very concerned that I did not roughen the
edges enough in the beginning, saying that matters very much. The master,... , often
said to me ‘You have to push hard already’. He made me sweat. He wanted that I kept
my hand on top of the top while grinding, saying ‘This works better’.23
22
The quotes are from De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 403. ‘Aen al dit schryven ende wry-
ven an dese sake siet men hoe moyelick het is een ambacht by syn selven perfect te leeren’. and ‘Ick
hebbe verscheydenmael sien slypen ende selve by de meesters geslepen, ende al gevraecht, dat ick
doen wilde, ende thuys gekommen synde, hebbe ick altyt noch meer te vraghen’. On cleaning with
a feather, see Ibidem, 371.
23
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 392. ‘De knecht, die my wees, was altyt seer bekommert
dat ick de kanten int eerste niet genoech en rocht, seggende dat daer veel aen geleghen was. De
meester, als ick de eerste reyse sleep, seyde dickwils teghen my: ‘Gy moet al hart douwen’. Hij dede
my sweten. Hy wilde hebben dat ick int slypen myn hant boven op den top van den dop hielde,
segghende: ‘Het gaet so beter’’.
24
On the visits to lens makers, see De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 383; 389-391.
On Descartes, see Ibidem, 349; 4 (1953), 224. On the claims of Sachariassen, see Zuidervaart,
‘Vaderlandsliefde’ (2007), 10-12 and 21-22, and his contribution to this volume.
25
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 249-250 and 395-395. The quote is on 395: ‘tot Johannes
Sacharias wederom leeren slypen ende polysten op myn yser becken’.
Overdone
Eventually Beeckman became an expert in his own right and began outdoing
professional lensgrinders. On 23 September 1633 he visited the Englishman
in Amsterdam who ground a lens in a couple of hours. Beeckman was not im-
pressed. ‘The glass [lens] was not good, mine are much better’.27 Sachariassen
was impressed by Beeckman’s command of the art:
Seeing that my glass was so good, yes better than his, he said that he was surprised
because my glass was so much ‘sifted’ (he calls it sifting when it is not finely ground
enough on the form) and when it is polished directly on the form then it cannot sift,
he says.28
In 1634 and 1635 Beeckman seems to have been grinding lenses almost
daily and he recorded all of it. ‘11 October 1634. I ground well in this way:
The glass was one-and-a-half inch in diameter. Put on the form a large thimble
full of wet grinding sand. With this I ground until the glass was dusted all
around, yet with a moist sponge I wiped off the form halfway, not wiping the
middle, but all around the rim’.29 And so on.
This entry was made after a disappointing discovery a month earlier: ‘Nota.
On 2 September 1634 I suddenly discovered that all my tinkering during the
26
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 376-377 and 399: ‘syn handelinghe juyst met de myne
niet overeenkommen en soude’.
27
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 307-309; quote on 308: ’t glas was niet goet; de myne
syn veel beter’.
28
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 376: ‘Hy siende dat myn glas so goet was, ja, beter dan
syne, seyde dat hy daerover verwondert was doordien dat myn glas soseer sifte (hy noemt siften alst
opt becken niet fyn genoech geslepen is) ende alst opt becken meteenen gepolyst wort, dan en kant
niet siften, seght hy’.
29
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 398-399: ‘11en Oct. 1634 sleep ick goet aldus: Tglas was
1½ duym in den diameter. Dede opt becken een groote vyngerhoet vol nat schuersant. Daermede
sleep ick totdat het glas alom gerocht was, doch vaeghde ick met een natachtighe sponsy het becken
wel half af, de midden niet vagende, maar ronsom den boort’.
‘On 24 May 1635 I ground without a top for the first time and I polished it clearly
on my metal form. The glasses were better than ever before, because there was no
imperfection in curvature whatsoever, which may happen because of the wobbling of
the top’.31
He had now truly mastered the art. In October 1635, a ‘showdown’ with
Sachariassen followed:
I ground against Joh. Sachariassen to decide who was the best, with identical glass
forms, but mine was much better, as he said himself after trials in the dark room at
Dr. Lansbergen. But he did not know that I had ground it without a top, because I
will reveal that to nobody.32
It is interesting to see that Beeckman had collected knowledge of lens making from
everywhere and from everyone, but that he was not willing to share the secrets he had
developed himself.
Conclusion
Despite Beeckman’s immense labour on lenses, it is unclear what his eventual
goal was. He made astronomical observations and he may have envisioned
30
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 395: ‘Nota. Den 2en September 1634 hebbe ick beschee-
lick bevonden dat al myn futselen den geheelen somer geleghen is geweest dat ick niet genoech gelet
en hebben op myn becken: dat het aen den rant wat afhelde, dat is, wat platter was dan de reste....
Uyt al dese futselinghen deses half jaer mach misschien wat goets kommen als synde meditatien
gefondeert op geene gront’.
31
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 419: ‘Den 24en Mey 1635 heb ick de eerste maal sonder
dop geslepen ende klaer gepolyst, ende was op myn metale becken. De glasen waren beter dan oyt te
vooren, want hier en is gansch geen causale bollicheyt, die bygevalle kompt door het wagghelen van
den dop’.
32
De Waard, Journal Beeckman, 3 (1945), 430: ‘Ick sleep teghen Joh. Sacharias om best, van gelyck
glas, maert myne was veel beter, so hyselve seyde, beproeft in een doncker kamer tot Dr. Lansbergen.
Maer hy en wist niet dat ick sonder dop slype, want dit en openbare ick niemant’.
Acknowledgements. I would like to thank Klaas van Berkel, Arjen Dijkstra and
Tim Nicolaije for their valuable comments and suggestions. This article is part
of the NWO-funded research project ‘The Uses of Mathematics in the Dutch
Republic’ (016.074.330).
Introduction
Looking at the properties of a lens tells us much about its history: the glass it is
made of, the fabrication process and its possible use in a working instrument.
Lenses preserved in museums and private collections can be regarded as docu-
ments that can provide historians of science with information about specific
aspects, such as provenance, the grinding and polishing process, the optical
performance, and more. With the aim of retrieving this information, as a col-
laboration led by the Institute and Museum of the History of Science (now
Museo Galileo) in Florence, in the early 1990s a testing campaign was started
on the seventeenth-century Italian lenses and telescopes in the Museum’s col-
lection. In recent years, the research was also extended to lenses at the Museo
della Specola in Bologna, and to a lens by Evangelista Torricelli at the Physics
Museum of the University of Naples. This research is still in progress, because
meanwhile the capabilities of the measuring instruments have been improved,
and new inspection techniques have become available.
The measuring techniques used have been carefully selected from among
non-invasive ones, in order not to risk damaging the lenses. Geometrical,
physical and functional characteristics of the lenses have been measured, and
most of the results obtained so far have been reported in the literature.1 These
examinations, together with written accounts of the time, make possible a
better reconstruction of the advances in lens-production technology in Italy in
the first few decades of seventeenth-century. In this paper, the main results will
1
Greco, Molesini & Quercioli, ‘Optical Tests of Galileo’s Lenses’ (1992); Greco, Molesini &
Quercioli, ‘Telescopes of Galileo’ (1993); Baiada, Bònoli & Braccesi, Catalogo (1995); Molesini &
Greco, ‘Galileo Galilei: Research and Development of the Telescope’ (1996); Van Helden, Catalogue
of Early Telescopes (1999); Miniati, Van Helden, Greco & Molesini, ‘Seventeenth-Century Telescope
Optics of Torricelli, Divini, and Campani’ (2002); Bònoli, Miniati, Greco & Molesini, ‘Telescope
Optics of Montanari, Cellio, Campani and Bruni’ (2002); Molesini, ‘The Telescopes of Seventeenth-
Century Italy’ (2003); Molesini, ‘Testing the Lenses of Campani’ (2004); Molesini, ‘The Optical
Quality of Seventeenth-Century Lenses’ (2007) and Strano, Galileo’s Telescope (2008).
2
Bedini, ‘Lens Making for Scientific Instrumentation in the Seventeenth Century’ (1966).
3
Sirtori, Telescopium (1618).
4
Manzini, L’occhiale all’occhio (1660).
5
Letter of Evangelista Torricelli to Raffaello Magiotti, 4 December 1643, in: Opere di Torricelli, 3
(1919), 150-156.
Lens generation
Once carefully selected for the absence of visible defects, the glass plate had first
to be rounded. To this purpose, a circle was marked with a divider (Ill. 1), prob-
ably with a cutting diamond attached to the turning arm. Evidence of such a
practice was found for example in the lens of Torricelli in Naples (Ill. 2). This
lens dates to the period 1642-1647, when Torricelli was in Florence and worked
on lens making. It was recovered, sometime before 1886, by Gilberto Govi6
and re-examined in detail in recent years.7 The lens is plano-convex, 11.1 cm
in diameter, 6.0 m in focal length. About the edge there is an inscription that
says Vang.ta Torricelli fece in Fiorenza per comand.to di S. A. S.ma (Evangelista
Torricelli made in Florence by order of His Very Serene Highness). Examining
the lens’ periphery, here and there one notices marked arcs remaining. Besides,
the lens is rounded by chipping the outer glass with cutters and pincers.
Next, the lens surfaces had to be given a preliminary shaping. This re-
quired on one side the securing of the lens to a holder, and on the other side
a tool plate with some curvature (opposite to that to be generated) to abrade
against.
As to the holder, Ill. 3 shows the drawing of a handle used by spectacle-lens
makers. The glass plate was attached with pitch, bitumen or similar adhesives
to the top disc of the handle; the use of plaster is also reported. As to the tool
6
Govi, ‘Di una lente per cannocchiale, lavorata da Evangelista Torricelli’ (1886).
7
Greco & Molesini, ‘Prove ottiche sulla lente di Torricelli’ (1994); Paternoster, Rinzivillo &
Schettino, ‘Studio di una lente per cannocchiale di grandi dimensioni lavorata da Evangelista
Torricelli’ (1996).
plate used at this stage, it was generally made of metal (iron, typically, but also
copper or other materials); the generation process is schematically indicated in
illustration 4.
In the case of telescope lenses, and particularly objectives, the shape of the
holder was changed, taking the form of a small grinding stone (illustration 5).8
Among the advantages of such new holder is the fact that, being driven
with the palm of the hand instead of the fist, less of unbalance was conferred to
the lens. In addition, making the holder from lead or another dense material,
the artisan had to push less when grinding. The tool plate used at this stage was
a rough one; only preliminary shaping with loose abrasive was given, to reduce
the time necessary afterwards for precise grinding.
Lens grinding
Grinding is the key operation performed in optical workshops that gives the
lens surfaces a spherical shape. The tools are similar to those used for prelimi-
nary shaping, although the process is more refined. Metal tool plates might
have been used at first. Sirtori reports a technique to generate the mild concav-
ity of the plate by means of a curved file (Ill. 6). However, it was observed that
this method was quite crude, each stroke removing the plate material along
a line and the end results, in terms of surface regularity, were poor. Also, the
use of moulds to examine the actual profile, reported by Sirtori, appears to be
8
Torricelli to Magiotti (ref. 5).
Ill. 6: Curved file to produce a tool plate. From: Sirtori, Telescopium (1618)
Lens polishing
The final polishing required a further tool plate to rub against, and particu-
lar skills. The previous tool plate could not be used, since the surface would
become shiny first at the edge, and only at a far later stage at the centre; the
spherical figure of the surface would then be severely impaired. Torricelli used
an almost plane tool plate made of slate, worn just a bit to concavity with
some pumice. The tool plate was firmly placed on a wooden table; a piece of
thin cloth was then stretched over the plate and fixed to the table with nails
all around (Ill. 8). The abrasive then in use was the so-called tripolo, a powder
made of extremely minute grains of silicon dioxide. The powder was damp-
ened and spread as an ointment on the cloth, with just a few drops of water.
The artisan then vigorously rubbed the lens along various directions on the
cloth, adding abrasive and water when needed, until the micro-roughness had
entirely disappeared from the surface.
The process was certainly lengthy and laborious. However, Torricelli men-
tioned in a letter that he succeeded producing two good objectives out of six
in about eight days of work.9 In addition to remarking the mastery of the lens
fabrication technology achieved by Torricelli, this letter is interesting because
it points out the common practice of producing lenses in (small) batches,
probably using the same tools; at the end the best performing ones were select-
ed, and the others were discarded. On the other hand, due to the production
process described above, Torricelli did not have good control over the radii
of curvature of the surfaces he ground, since these depended on the depth of
the depression in the tool plate. For this reason, it is interesting to note that
the Museo Galileo in Florence houses a Torricelli lens 11.5 cm in diameter
and 6.0 m in focal length, with the inscription Vangelista Torricelli. Fiorenza.
1646. Braccia 10 ¼, whose characteristics are strikingly similar to those of the
Torricelli lens in the Physics Museum of the University of Naples. Such a lens
is shown in ill. 9.
Lens testing
Not very much is known about lens testing practices in seventeenth century.
Apart from the visual inspection of the lens itself for defects, the most obvious
9
Letter from Evangelista Torricelli to Rafael Magiotti, 6 February 1644, in: Opere di Torricelli 3 (1919),
165-166.
test was a trial of its performance, mounting the lens (the objective) in the
telescope and observing a bright star or planet. In fact it is known that in some
cases Galileo suggested oval apertures because of defective optics.10 While this
proves the awareness of Galileo that appropriate adjustments could perfect the
optical performance of his telescope, it also testifies to his ability to carry out
testing procedures: the actual size and shape of the diaphragm should have
been a compromise between image quality and brightness, depending on the
features of the lens being used.
Although the lenses of the same batch were produced under similar condi-
tions, a sizeable fraction did not pass the final test and had to be discarded.
Considering the hard work, the time and the cost of producing lenses, the
main reason for discarding one was probably something else than an evident
defect of the lens material, such as gas bubbles, seeds, glass turbidity and col-
our: in that case the glass plate would not have been used for lens making.
Hidden defects only showed up after the lens was finished and mounted in
a telescope. Typical defects of this kind were inhomogeneity of the refractive
index due to the presence of swirls and knots within the glass. These distort the
light path through the lens and result in image degradation. It was understood
that, in spite of some screening that was performed before the glass plate was
used for lens making,11 slightly defective material could not be detected and
discarded in advance.
10
Letter of Galileo to [Antonio de’ Medici?], 7 January 1610, in: Galilei, Opere, 10 (1900), 273.
11
Torricelli, ‘Condizioni richieste nei vetri’, note attached to the letter to Magiotti (ref. 9).
Concluding remarks
A number of seventeenth-century Italian telescope lenses have been tested
so far, in particular of Galileo, Torricelli, Eustachio Divini and Giuseppe
Campani. The most relevant result is that the optical quality of the objectives
was surprisingly good. Galileo’s broken objective lens, shown in Ill. 10, was
almost diffraction limited, i.e., optically perfect for visual use.
Similar levels of quality were almost routinely achieved by Campani.
Although Galileo used to purchase a great number of lenses, choosing from
them the best ones, already at the time of Torricelli the lens fabrication process
had become a well defined technology, in which the single production steps
were understood, and brought to perfection.
Investigations are still ongoing. Present research is aimed at determining
the composition of the glass the lenses are made of. Techniques being used are
spectrophotometric analysis and X-ray fluorescence. The former can point out
the presence of a few typical compounds in the glass melt. The latter is a more
direct determination of particular atomic elements within the lens material. It
is hoped that the information on the chemical composition of the glass can
help in locating the lenses themselves, and the telescopes they belong to, more
precisely within their historical framework.
Acknowledgments. The author acknowledges all the persons who during the
past years contributed to the research summarized in this note, and particu-
larly F. Bònoli, G. Dragoni, P. Galluzzi, V. Greco, A. Van Helden, P.A. Mandò,
Introduction
Johannes Kepler’s Dioptrice (published in 1611) produced the first theoretical
explanation of the Dutch telescope. Notwithstanding the unanimous recog-
nition of the founding role of the Dioptrice for modern geometrical optics,
questions such as whether it was widely read, how well it was understood,
or how influential it actually was remain open. While some scholars from an
older generation regarded Kepler’s work as the major influence behind the im-
provements in telescope construction, yet others pointed out that the Dioptrice
seemed forgotten for decades, its seminal ideas developed by no one.1 Following
a hint by Galileo Galilei, some scholars even advanced that the Dioptrice was
little read and appreciated because of its obscurity – as is well known, Galileo at
least once said (in 1614) that the Dioptrice was so difficult that not even Kepler
understood it.2 Puzzlingly, therefore, while the Dioptrice has been claimed to
be a seminal work, it is also claimed that it has hardly had any theoretical or
practical influence. As we shall see here the tension between the foundational
character of the Dioptrice and the doubts about its audience found in the
historiography is at least in part a consequence of the nature of Kepler’s geo-
metrical optics. On the one hand, Kepler set forth notions, techniques, and
explanations that were henceforward to play a crucial role in optics – includ-
ing ray pencils, pinhole images, the projection of picturae by lenses, and the
optical properties of the eye. These and other features of Kepler’s optics were
fully incorporated in most optical treatises from the 1620s on. On the other
hand, Kepler’s explanation of the working principles of the Dutch telescope
does not include geometrical optical images. His account of the telescope is
1
For appraisals of Kepler’s legacy in optics see G. Simon, Structures, 1 (1979), 574-575; Dijksterhuis,
Mechanization (1964), 390; Hoskin, ‘Introduction’ (1962), vi; Caspar, Kepler (1959), 198-201.
2
Drake, Galileo at Work (1978), 237-238; idem, Telescopes, Tides and Tactics (1983), 23; Geymonat,
Galilei (1957), 45. On the obscurity of Kepler’s writings see Hall, The Revolution in Science (1983),
133; Caspar, Kepler (1959), 201; Ronchi, Optics (1991), 47.
3
Ronchi, Optics (1991), 47-49; idem, ‘L’ottica del Keplero e quella di Newton’ (1956); King, The
History of the Telescope (1979), 44; Park, The Fire within the Eye (1997), 166-168; Dijksterhuis, Lenses
and Waves (2004), 24-50.
4
Van Helden, ‘The Telescope in the Seventeenth Century’ (1974); idem, ‘The Development of
Compound Eye Pieces, 1640-1670’ (1977); idem, The Invention of the Telescope (1977); idem, ‘The
Astronomical Telescope’ (1976).
5
In this article all references to the Dioptrice are to Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, 4 (1941), 329-414.
6
Kepler, Dioptrice (ref. 5), 357. For a full discussion of the geometrical optical content, see Malet,
‘Kepler and the Telescope’ (2003).
7
Kepler, Ad Vitellionem (1968), 191; see Malet, ‘Keplerian Illusions’ (1990) 15-17.
8
Kepler, Dioptrice (ref. 5), 361.
9
Ibidem, proposition 80, 381-382.
Ill.2. From the Dioptrice, p. 377 Ill.3. From the Dioptrice, p. 379
10
Ibidem, propositions 70 and 75, 377-378 & 379-380.
11
Ibidem, 395. Definition 101 reads: ‘Tubus usurpatur pro opaco cavo cylindro, cujus bina ostia
clauduntur vitris perspicuis; scilicet pro oculari illo instrumento, quo res longinquas quasi cominus
aspicimus’.
12
Ibidem, 395-402, propositions 107 to 115.
13
Ibidem, 397-398; see also Malet, ‘Kepler and the Telescope’ (2003), 121-122.
14
Kepler, Dioptrice (ref. 5), 405-414.
15
Ibidem, 414.
16
Ibidem, 387; Kepler devotes another problem (proposition 89) to solve the problem of ‘show-
ing things distinctly, enlarged, and upright’ by the combination of three convex lenses (389). An
additional proposition analyses the combination of two convex lenses that diminishes instead of
enlarging visible things (proposition 87, 387-388). See Malet, ‘Kepler and the Telescope’ (2003),
119-120 & 134-136.
17
Gassendi, Institutio astronomica (1653), ‘Nota ad lectorem’, [A2] verso. Gassendi’s Institutio was
first published in 1647 and last printed in 1702. Other editions were dated 1653, 1656, 1675, 1680,
and 1682-83. I have not been able to see the editions of 1647 and 1702 but apparently they do no
contain Kepler’s Dioptrice.
18
The second edition contained a sixth supplementary volume, in which we find Herigone’s ac-
knowledgement of his debt to Kepler’s Dioptrice (p. 242). In both editions Herigone’s ‘La Dioptrique’
- ‘Dioptrica’ occupied 127-189 of the fifth volume.
19
Hevelius, Selenographia (1647), 14 & 19.
20
Schyrleus de Rheita, Oculus Enoch et Eliae (1645), 340 & 351.
21
On Rheita, see Willach, ‘The Development of Telescopic Optics’ (2001).
22
Orleans, La dioptrique oculaire (1671). Cherubin d’Orleans’ books for the use of the Dauphin,
now kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, have their covers richly gilded with dolphins all
around. For its many pages – almost half of the book – devoted to lens grinding and polishing, see
Burnett, Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest (2005), 107-121 [quotation on 107].
23
Scheiner, Oculus, hoc est fundamentum opticum (1619). In demonstrating the formation of the
Keplerian ‘picture’ on the retina, Scheiner modifies the geometry of Kepler’s pencils of rays and in-
consistently reintroduces perspectivist pyramids; see 155-158 (quoting from the 1652 London edi-
tion). He elaborates his melange of Keplerian pencils and perspectivist pyramids in his Rosa ursina
sive sol (1630). D’Orleans’ words in La dioptrique oculaire (1671), 8-11 are reminiscent of Scheiner’s
in Rosa ursina (1630), 117-118.
24
Pagination refers to D’Orleans, Dioptrique oculaire (1671).
25
Ibidem, 61-65.
26
Ibidem, ‘Au lecteur’, eii verso; similar reference on 6.
27
Manzini, L’occhiale all’occhio (1660).
28
Ilardi, Renaissance vision from spectacles to telescopes (2007), 229-234 [quotation on 229]. On
Manzini, see also Bedini, ‘An Early Optical Lens-Grinding Lathe’ (1967).
29
Manzini, L’occhiale all’occhio (1660), 128-129.
30
Manzini, L’occhiale all’occhio (1660) includes references to Kepler in 128, 129, 131, 138, 142,
144, 145, 149, 150, 154, 163, 174, 187, 195, 197, etc. Manzini’s references to the results mentioned
above are found on 128-129, 138, 131 & 153-154.
31
Ibidem,194-196; reference to Dioptrice’s proposition 80 on 196.
32
Ibidem,197-198.
33
Ibidem,142-145.
34
Ibidem,174.
35
Kepler, Dioptrice (ref. 5), 405 & 412.
36
Manzini, Occhiale all’occhio (1660), 148-151 [references to Kepler on 149-150].
37
Ibidem,186-188 [for Manzini’s reference to his telescopes as being particularly useful in ‘mare e
campagna’, see 188].
38
Ibidem,189-190 [quotation on 189].
Notice that Kepler’s results provide the conceptual structure that enables
both d’Orleans and Manzini to articulate their new results and new designs.
In making public their practical innovations, both authors cannot avoid bring-
ing in Kepler’s conceptualization of the telescope. Kepler’s terminology and
understanding of the different parts of the telescope are the tools they use to
explain how the new designs work. Moreover, in Manzini we find hints that
some of his new combinations of lenses were inspired by results he found in
Kepler (such as propositions 125 and 135 from the Dioptrice; see above).
39
Huygens, Oeuvres complètes, 8 (1899), 443-451, 474-478 & 533-536.
40
See Gregory, Optica promota (1663), propositions 31, 46, 47; Molyneux, Dioptrica nova (1692),
122 & 160-161.
41
W. Warner, ‘De loco imaginis’, British Library, Ms Harley 6756, fol. 5-26.
they had been hitherto treated’. For in his investigations, he found straight
away that... ‘the rays... delineate an image of the object at the base [here “base”
probably refers to the focus] of the telescope’. That was about 1640. Gascoigne’s
papers are no longer extant but what Flamsteed attributes to him sounds very
similar to the modern principle of image location.42 Its first printed formula-
tion is found in Mersenne’s L’optique et la catoptrique (1651), but it is Gilles
Personne de Roberval’s contribution. Roberval fully characterized the new no-
tion of optical image, but did not develop a theory of optical instruments
based on it.43 The first theory of this kind is found in James Gregory’s Optica
promota, published in 1663. Gregory argued (see Illustration 8) that when the
eye A receives rays originating in B but actually coming to the eye as if they
originated in L, then the eye ‘applies itself ’ to process the rays, and therefore
the eye makes the mind ‘see’ B in L.44 There is therefore a strong assumption
to be made to believe that the focal points M'N' (going back to Illustration 7)
may be perceived as a representation of the object MN—the assumption that
the mere divergence of the rays coming from visible things enables the mind
(by means of the accommodation of ocular humours) to determine their lo-
cation. For some reason by the late seventeenth century this assumption was
easily made, and not only by opticians. Robert Boyle, for instance, agreed with
it. He mentions the eye’s ability to tell distances (i.e., the distance separat-
ing a visible point to the eye) and therefore to identify the location of visible
things, as an example of the (necessarily limited) abilities of reason.45 Edmé
42
Chapman, Preface to Flamsteed (1982); quotation on 104.
43
Mersenne, L’optique et la catoptrique (1651), 112-114.
44
Gregory, Optica promota (1663), 1 [for the geometrical definition of image], 41 & 46-47.
45
Boyle, Discourse of Things above Reason, in: Birch, Works, 4 (1772), 414.
Ill.9. Reflected and refracted geometrical images in Thomas Harris’s Lexicon Technicum
(1708-10).
Mariotte, the natural philosopher in Paris, also accepted this principle of im-
age location and in 1678 explicitly linked it to his faith in the ability of sight
to tell distances to the mind.46 However, there was no consensus on the matter.
Other natural philosophers, including Descartes, Huygens and followers of
Descartes, expressed misgivings about the eye’s ability to tell distances and did
not take seriously the new principle of image location.47 Gregory, who knew
his Kepler very well, stressed his definition of optical image was an innovation
which took him much time to produce.48 It was taken up by Barrow in his
46
Mariotte, Essai de logique (1992), 148-155.
47
Descartes, La Dioptrique, in: Oeuvres de Descartes, 6 (1996), 144 ; See also ref. 39.
48
Gregory, Optica promota (1663), preface, A3 verso. On Gregory as reader of Kepler’s optics, see
Malet, ‘Gregory, Descartes, Kepler, and the Law of Refraction’ (1990).
49
Whewell, The Mathematical Works of Isaac Barrow (1860), 36; Shapiro, The Optical Papers of Isaac
Newton, vol. 1 (1984), 215.
50
Harris, Lexicon Technicum (1710), Lemma ‘Optics’. On the reception of the new principle of
image location, see Shapiro, ‘The Optical Lectures’ (1990).
51
Priestley, The History and Present State of Discoveries (1772), 638 & 688; Priestley, who did not
agree with Berkeley’s criticism, pointed to him as the first to seriously rise objections against the
new principle of image location A strong and highly articulate criticism of the new principle of im-
age location is found in Smith, A Compleat System of Optics (1738), 50-51, where he embraced and
developed Berkeley’s views. Smith’s work concludes with a long series of ‘Remarks’ independently
paginated. He took up the topic again on 35-44.
Introduction
The year 1608 saw two remarkable interacting events in the Dutch United
Provinces, which are both mentioned in a French newsletter, published in
early October 1608.1 These coinciding events were the first demonstration
of a working telescope and the first embassy to a European country of diplo-
mats from far-away Siam (now Thailand). Both events took place when im-
portant diplomatic negotiations were going on in The Hague between Spain,
the Dutch Republic and diplomats from France, England and the Palatinate (a
Rhineland state in Southern Germany) to negotiate a cease-fire in the ongoing
war of independence of the Dutch against the Spanish Crown.
In 1568 the Dutch Low Countries started an insurrection (later known as
the Eighty Years War, 1568-1648) against the regime of the powerful Spanish
empire under the reign of King Philip II, in which revolt William the Silent,
the Prince of Orange, took the lead. Initially it was an uprising against the
Catholic faith and the high taxes imposed by the Spanish regime, but gradu-
ally it became a war of independence. In 1608 William’s son, Count Maurits
of Nassau, was the military commander-in-chief of the Republic of the United
Dutch Provinces, in the service of the sovereign States General. Initially the
Dutch troops had suffered defeats against the Spanish army, but gradually
Maurits achieved military parity. As a result of financial problems and war-
weariness of both parties, peace negotiations started in 1606, and they even-
tually led to the Twelve Years Truce (1609-1621). A major demand of the
Spanish government was the termination of the Dutch trade with the East
1
There were two editions of this newsletter, but only three copies have survived worldwide. See:
Zoomers & Zuidervaart, Embassies (2008), 9. Also: Pelliot, ‘Les Relations du Siam et de Hollande en
1608’ (1936) and Drake, The Unsung Journalist and The Origin of the Telescope (1976).
2
Sluiter, ‘The First Known Telescopes carried to America, Asia and the Arctic’ (1997), 142-143.
3
Resolutiën Staten Generaal, 11 november 1636, printed in: De Waard, Journal tenu par Isaac
Beeckman, 4 (1953), 253.
4
Cf. Van Berkel, ‘Hortensius’ (1997), 76.
5
Van Dam, Beschryvinghe van de Oostindische Compagnie, 1:2 (1929), 676. Willem Jansz Blaeu
published the book Institutio astronomica (1634) in cooperation with Hortensius.
6
Valentijn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, 3:2 (1726), 72-73; Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company
Merchants (2007), 30-32; Duyvendak, ‘The First Siamese Embassy to Holland’ (1936).
7
Zoomers & Zuidervaart, Embassies (2008), 21; Van Helden, ‘Who Invented the Telescope’
(2009).
8
See: Zuidervaart, this volume.
9
Abrahams, ‘The Meaning of the ‘Anniversary of the Telescope’’ (2009), 3; Brummelhuis, Merchant,
Courtier and Diplomat (1987), 11; Brozius, De Koning van Siam, (1996), 9; Zandvliet, Maurits Prins
van Oranje (2000), 281; Wap, Het gezantschap van den Sultan van Achin (1862), 83.
Japan
Captain John Saris (c. 1580-1643), sailing in the service of the English East
India Company, left England on 18 April 1611 with three ships: his flagship
Clove, the Hector and the Thomas. He first went to Bantam, where he pur-
chased pepper.11 From Bantam the Clove ventured alone to Japan and arrived
with a crew of 70 persons on 12 June 1613 in Hirado, a city in the Nagasaki
prefecture and a major centre for foreign trade. With the local daimyo he
made arrangements to visit the court. After being received by the Emperor on
Sluiter, ‘The telescope before Galileo’ (1997), 226. See also Zuidervaart, in this volume.
10
Note that all dates mentioned by Saris are in the Julian calendar, which differs ten days with the
11
Gregorian calendar.
12
Satow, The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan (1900), 113; Paske-Smith, Western Barbarians in
Japan and Formosa (1968), 19-20.
13
Satow, Voyage (1900), lxvii.
14
The text mentions 24 April 1611. However there was no lunar eclipse on 24 April [= 4 May
Gregorian] 1611, but there was one on 4 May 1613.
15
Van der Aa, Agtste Oost-Indische Reys (1707), 81; Satow, Voyage (1900), 65-66.
16
Satow, Voyage (1900),113.
17
Thompson, Diary of Richard Cocks, 1 (1883).
18
Cf. Michel, ‘On Japanese Imports of Optical Instruments in the Early Edo-Era’ (2004) and
Abrahams, ‘The History of the Telescope in Japan’ (2005).
19
Boxer, A True Description (1971), liii; Mulder, Hollanders in Hirado (1980), 68, 199.
20
Coolhaas, Generale Missiven, 2 (1964), 421.
21
Ibidem, 423-424.
22
Coolhaas, Generale Missiven, 4 (1971), 367.
23
Shirahara, Japan Envisions the West (2007), 139.
24
Ibidem, 163; Blussé & Remmelink, The Deshima Diaries (2004), 561.
China
The interest in astronomy and the telescope in Japan is equivalent to the inter-
est in China. The history of science and technology in China is long and rich.
The earliest recorded observations of comets, solar eclipses, and supernovae
were made in China. The four great inventions of ancient China, the compass,
gunpowder, papermaking, and printing, were among the most important early
technological advances, and only became known in Europe toward the end of
the Middle Ages.27
The Jesuit missions to China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
with men like Allessandro Valignano (1539-1606), Michele Ruggieri (1543-
1607) and Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) introduced western science and astron-
omy – then undergoing its own revolution back in Europe – to China, and
knowledge of Chinese technology was brought back to Europe. The Jesuits in
China not only aimed at proselytizing, but they also employed western science
(particularly astronomy and cartography) to demonstrate that Christianity
was a superior teaching and that those who followed its doctrines could solve
25
See also Nakamura, ‘The earliest telescope preserved in Japan’ (2008), for possible Chinese and
Jesuit influences on early Japanese telescope making.
26
Yi, Tienjing Huowen (c. 1750). See Yoshida, ‘‘Dutch Studies’ and Natural Sciences’ (2000), 91-
94.
27
Temple, China (1986), 29-30, 33-34.
28
Diaz, Thien Wên Lüeh (1615); Parker, Windows into China (1978); Gallagher, China in the
Sixteenth Century (1953); Fairbank [et al], East Asia (1975), 244-251; Dunne, Generation of Giants
(1962), 68-69.
29
Hodges, ‘Western Science in Siam’ (1998), 85-86.
30
Merson, Roads to Xanadu (1989), 102-103; Dunne, Generation of Giants (1962), 199-200, 220-
222; Udías, ‘Jesuit Astronomers in Beijing’ (1994), 467-469.
31
Reed & Demattè, China on Paper (2007), 182-185; Zezong, ‘On the Mistakes of Emperor
Kangxi’s Scientific Policy’ (2001), 69-74; Qiao & Shizhu, (eds.), China’s Ancient Large Astronomical
Instruments Exhibition (2001); Temple, China, 36-39.
Laos
As the dominant foreign power in the Siamese capital Ayutthaya, the Dutch
next attempted to extend their control over other countries in Indochina. They
did this by founding trading stations in Cambodia and Vietnam and by try-
ing to establish direct relations with the landlocked kingdom of Vieng Chan
(Vientiane), now part of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In 1641 the
under-merchant Gerrit Wuysthoff departed on behalf of the VOC to Vieng
Chan. King Suryawongsa (who reigned from 1638 to 1695) viewed the
Dutch as suitable trade partners. He had invited a VOC representative, and
so Wuysthoff was the first official European visitor of the country. Wuysthoff,
his assistants Willem de Gooyer, Huybert van Lochorst and his party travelled
from Phom Penh in Cambodia (where the Dutch kept a trading post), up the
Mekong river to Vieng Chan. They used several pirogues (a large canoe-like
proa), facing currents, rapids and underwater rock formations.
When the Dutch arrived in Vieng Chan they were questioned by the king’s
advisers and the presents for the king were inspected. As many of the presents
(parcels of cloth) had been damaged during the long journey, the king’s coun-
sellors suggested a larger tribute for the king. The VOC party was told that
32
Dapper, Gedenkwaerdig Bedryf (1670), 356-358; Vixseboxse, Hollandsch Gezantschap naar China
(1946).
Burma
During a relatively short period, 1634-1680, the VOC also kept a formal rela-
tionship with Burma. The VOC sent one ship annually to the capital of Ava,
33
[Van Wuysthoff], Vremde Geschiedenissen (1669), 24; Casteleyn, Strange Events (2003), 31;
Lejosne, Journal de Voyage de G. van Wuysthoff (1986), 147; Nepote & Levy, ‘A propos du ‘Journal
de voyage au Laos’ de G. van Wuysthoff et de ses assistants’ (1986); Valentijn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-
Indien, 50-52; Stuart-Fox, The Lao Kingdom of Lān Xāng (1998), 86-95, 148.
34
Casteleijn, Strange Events (2003), 45-46; Lejosne, Journal Van Wuysthoff (1986); Marini,
Description of the Lao Kingdom (1998), xxv-xxvi, xxxix.
Siam
To complete this overview, I return to Siam. The kingdom of Ayutthaya was es-
tablished in 1350 by King Ramatibodi and lasted until 1767, when the capital
was captured and destroyed by the Burmese. After the destruction of Ayutthaya
most of the historical records were destroyed. However four hundred years of
Thai history is collected in the preserved ‘Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya’.36
Of course I have consulted these ‘Royal Chronicles’ for references to the tele-
scope during the Ayutthayan period. Regrettably the first Siamese embassy to
Europe in 1608, which probably had been an eyewitness of the newly invented
telescope, is not mentioned at all. On the other hand they do mention another
– later – event in which a telescope was involved. This concerned the discovery
of a Buddha Footprint by a hunter on a hillside near Saraburi, which matched
with the description in the Buddhist Holy Scriptures of this phenomenon.
35
Dijk, Seventeenth-century Burma and the Dutch East India Company (2006), 203-205.
36
It took Richard Cushman about twenty years to translate all the known versions of the Royal
Chronicles of Ayutthaya in a coherent way. The result is an epic of 375.000 words; In later years seven
major versions and several smaller fragments were rediscovered and published in the original Thai.
See: Cushman, Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya (2000), 210. See also: Pombejra, Siamese Court Life
(2001), 126; Garnier, Auytthaya (2004), 92; Raben & Pombejra, In the King’s Trail (1997, 34-35,
39.
Two brigades of Farangs (westerners) were ordered to survey and cut a wide passage
for a land route all the way straight to the boat landing [at the Pasak river, HZ], to
cut down the jungle with knives and to pound the surface level so it was pleasingly
smooth to form a finished imperial highway.
In order to make the road as straight as possible a Dutch engineer was sent
out with a telescope. The road from the landing stage at Tha Rua runs in one
straight line to Phra Phutthabat, located at a distance of some 20 kilometres.
This road is still called by local villagers ‘thanon farang song klong’ (the road
of the westerner looking through a telescope) and is partly still in use at Ban
Song Sok. In addition I refer to a report, dated 8 February 1623, written by
two employees of the English East India Company in Batavia, informing the
Directors in London that, among other things, ‘a curious perspective glasse
faire and good, a faire and neate case of pistols, an English watch’ would be
most acceptable to the king of Siam.37
Dhiravat na Pombejra refers to the depiction of Dutchmen who featured
in several mural paintings and other pictorial representations from the late
Ayutthayan to the early Bangkok period. In Thai mural art a ‘Dutchman’ is
recognisable by his red hair, European-style dress, and the association with fire
arms or telescopes. In this respect the Thai iconography is comparable to the
Japanese iconography of Dutchmen: red hear, big nose, with a Gouda clay
pipe and a telescope. Dhiravat also describes a lacquered manuscript cabinet
of Wat Anongkharam, depicting a Dutchman with a telescope firing a can-
non, which he judges to be perhaps the most interesting representation of a
Dutchman in Siamese art of the early modern period.38
The most important and influential Siamese king during the seventeenth
century in regard to the telescope is King Narai (reigned 1656-1688). Even as
a chaofa (prince of the royal blood), he already showed his interest in scientific
and technological advances in Europe. The king’s fascination with European
37
Farrington & Pombejra, The English Factory in Siam, 1 (2007), 311-312.
38
Pombejra, ‘Keynote speech’ (2004), 46-47; personal communication. Unfortunately according to
recent information from the Fine Arts Department the cabinet has disappeared from the temple
39
Hodges, ‘Time in Transition’ (1999) , 33-44; Pombejra, Siamese Court Life (2001), 126.
40
Pombejra, Siamese Court Life (2001), 154.
41
Ibidem, 166; Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company Merchants (2007), 145-147.
42
Tachard, Voyage de Siam (1686), 7-11; idem, A Relation of the Voyage to Siam (1999), 5; Landry-
Deron, ‘Les Mathématiciens envoyés en Chine par Louis XIV en 1685’ (2001); Hennequin, ‘Les
premières observations astronomiques occidentales’ (2004) 63-102.
and scientific tables.43 These six Jesuits, also called ‘the mathematicians’, agreed
to make astronomical observations in China and during their voyage. The
French Royal Academy also provided tables for the satellites of Jupiter, which
served for determining the geographical longitudes of places.
The expedition left the French naval port of Brest in March 1685 and ar-
rived at the end of May at the Cape of Good Hope. There the Jesuits made
some observations of the Jovian satellites with a 12-foot telescope made by
the late Monsieur [Philippe-Claude] le Bas and a pendulum clock beating
seconds, made by Monsieur [Isaac] Thuret of Paris (Ill. 2).44 The French vessels
arrived at the end of September before Siam, at the entrance of the Menam
Chao Phraya. After the ambassador and his retinue had been received in audi-
ence by King Narai in Ayutthaya, the king left with all his wives for Louvo
43
Tachard, Voyage (1686); idem, Voyage (1999), xix-xx; Frey and Frey, ‘The Search for Souls in China’
(2003), 231-233.
44
Tachard, Voyage (1686), 74-77; idem, Voyage (1999), 41; Bouvet, Voiage de Siam (1963), 45-48;
Goüye, ‘Observations Physiques et mathematiques’ (1729), 611-613.
house called ‘Thlee-poussonne’, not far from the forest where the king used
to hunt elephants. It was a one-storey hall made of bricks and cement, and
is presently known as ‘Phra Thinang Yen’ or ‘Thale Chup Son Hall’, about
four kilometres from the centre of the town.46 King Narai used this location
to observe the lunar eclipse together with the French Jesuit priests. The loca-
tion of this building, just outside the city walls, can be found on a contempo-
rary map of Louvo, drawn by a French engineer (see Ill. 3). The actual lunar
eclipse took place at around three o’clock in the morning. For the king the
Jesuits set up a very good telescope, five foot long and placed on a tripod, in
the window of a room at Phra Thinang Yen that looked into the gallery from
where the mathematicians made their observations (see Ill. 4). At his request
King Narai also looked through a telescope twelve feet long and made several
inquiries. Father Thomas Goüye (1650-1725) has left us a remarkably detailed
46
Tachard, Voyage (1686), 318-320, 326-334; idem, Voyage (1999), 163, 196.
318 voettekst
description of both the observations at Cape of Good Hope and the lunar
eclipse in Louvo.47
Father Guy Tachard (1651-1712) noted that a Brahmin astrologer, who
was at Louvo, had foretold this eclipse almost to a quarter of an hour correctly;
but he was mightily mistaken as to the duration of it, saying that the moon
would not emerge from the earth’s shadow until it was below the horizon (i.e.
after sunrise). But the Brahmin astrologer stipulated he did not share the belief
of the Buddhist monks (like the popular belief in China) that when the moon
is eclipsed, it is eaten by a dragon, which could only be chased away by beating
drums and making noise.48
The French delegation left Ayutthaya on 14 December 1685, and arrived in
Brest on 18 June 1686. On the morning of 30 April 1688, King Narai again ob-
served an eclipse at the new observatory, this time a solar eclipse, together with a
few Jesuit mathematicians who had remained behind in Siam, with the intent to
staff the observatory at Peking at a later date. King Narai died on 10 July 1688.
With his death the Prasat Thong dynasty ended. His successor Petracha seized
power in a Siamese coup d état, which led to the expulsion of all French troops,
Jesuits and civilians from Siam. As a consequence the Dutch VOC regained her
influence in Ayutthaya.
Exactly 180 years later King Mongkut (Rama IV), who reigned from 1851
to 1868 and who was a keen astronomer, calculated the circumstances for a
total eclipse of the sun. He had studied traditional astrology when he was a
monk and supplemented this with modern books, telescopes and other equip-
ment ordered from London. Mongkut’s own calculations, based on the astro-
nomical tables computed by the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, showed
that on 18 August 1868, the path of a total eclipse of the sun would cross the
southernmost part of Siam, south of Petchaburi. His calculations proved cor-
rect, but during his sojourn at the observation site King Mongkut contracted
malaria and died on 1 October 1868. Astrologers had prophesied that the
eclipse was an evil omen of disease and death.49
47
Goüye, Observations Physiques et Mathématiques (1692), 61-119; idem, ‘Observations Physiques
et mathematiques’ (1729), 614-635.
48
Tachard, Voyage (1686), 334-335; idem, Voyage (1999), 204-205; Loubere, A New Historical
Relation (1693), 64-65; Hennequin, ‘Archives astronomiques de France concernant le royaume de
Siam’ (2001), 188-195; Smithies, ‘Eclipses in Siam’ (2003), 189-204.
49
Chakrabongse, Lords of Life (1967), 211-213; Hobden, The King of Siam’s Eclipse (2006), 24-
31; Harding, ‘The Eclipse of the Astrologers’ (2008), 6-8; Stephan, ‘Rapport sur l’Observation de
l’Éclipse’ (1868).
Introduction
In this contribution I will focus on the function and meaning of music and its
relation with other disciplines.1 Although we are nowadays inclined to regard
music purely as an art form, or as a discipline belonging to the Humanities,
this has not always been the case. Studying the history and sources of western
music teaches us that the position of music is not a one-dimensional one. In
fact, it is easy to point out clear connections with mathematical disciplines,
including astronomy. For instance, in Plato’s Politeia [The Republic] Socrates
even stated that astronomy and music are like sisters in science, for as the eye
is focussed on astronomy, so is the ear receptive to harmony.2
In Plato’s Timaeus, and in Aristotle’s Politics, these connections are further
explained. Musical sounds and rhythms were ordered by the use of numbers,
and these numbers were thought to exemplify the general concept of harmo-
nia: the unification of parts in an orderly whole. Through this concept, Greek
scholars perceived music as a reflection of the order of the universe. Music
was, thus, closely connected to astronomy through this notion of harmony. It
may therefore not come as a surprise that the leading astronomer of antiquity,
Claudius Ptolemy, was an important author on music as well. Mathematical
laws and proportions were considered the underpinnings of both musical in-
tervals and the motions of the heavenly bodies. Planets, their distances from
each other, and their movements were all believed to correspond to particular
musical tones, intervals and/or scales.
Anaximander, a younger associate of the – proverbially first – Greek phi-
losopher Thales, introduced the idea of ‘heavenly spheres’ wrapped around the
central earth-column. Plato came up with an evocative tour of these spheres
1
I am indebted to my brother, the philosopher Dr. Hans Clement, for his valuable remarks made
on the draft of this contribution, and to Sally Holman for her critical reading of the English text.
2
Plato, Politeia, VII, 530d. Cf. Vetter, Concentrische cirkels (2000), 68.
in his ‘Myth of Er’, the eschatological legend concluding his dialogue known
as The Republic (see above), in which he described the ‘Spindle of Necessity’.
This early form of a spinning wheel was a wooden dowel, tapering at its ends,
which was fitted with a whorl, usually made of stone and shaped as a dough-
nut. The spindle consisted of three main parts: a hook, a shaft, and a whorl.
On this whorl of the celestial spindle, eight ‘orbits’ were placed, each creating
a perfect circle. The eight circles of the cosmic whorl – from the outermost
moving toward the spindle – were: the ring of fixed stars, the moon, the sun,
Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. A siren stood on each ring and
as the celestial whorl revolved, they were carried around with the movement,
thus uttering the concords of a single musical scale.3 The orbits can be identi-
fied as those of the planets corresponding to the Aristotelian planetary spheres,
and shown in Ill. 1.
Already to the Pythagoreans it seemed that the distances between the planets
would have the same ratios as the harmonious sounds produced by a plucked
string. According to them, the spheres of the solar system produced sounds,
just like a projectile when moving through the air. The inner spheres gave lower
tones, while those further away moved faster, thus giving higher pitched tones.
All combined into a beautiful harmony: the music of the spheres. It is clear
that Plato derived his ideas as described in The Republic from the Pythagoreans.
3
Plato, Politeia, X, 616-617.
4
Cf. Stahl, Martianus Capella (1977).
In the Middle Ages, the Seven Liberal Arts offered a canonical way of depict-
ing the realms of higher learning. In medieval Europe, music – being one of
the liberal arts – belonged to the Quadrivium and not to the verbal disciplines.
A beautiful, well-known depiction of the seven liberal arts can be found in
the so-called Hortus Deliciarum [Garden of Delight] of Herrad of Hohenberg,
or Hohenbourg, abbess of Mont-Sainte-Odile (see Ill. 3). Herrad was named
abbess of the women’s monastery of St Odile at Hohenberg (or Hohenbourg),
near Strasbourg in the mid-1170s. She managed to produce an encyclopaedic
compilation of sources concerning the history of human salvation, from the
creation to the end of the world. Besides the theological texts, the book also
5
Her work consisted of over 300 parchment leaves of folio size. In interpreting the Holy Scriptures,
she made use of the work of scholars such as Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux, but she also took
into account the newest insight by contemporaries including Peter Lombard and Peter Comestor,
whose works formed part of the core curriculum of the new schools. It seems that she was aiming to
bring together the best of the old and new theological writing in a teaching manual of both words
and pictures in order to educate her canonesses. In addition to the Latin texts, over 344 illustra-
tions were used, including more than 130 brightly coloured full-page illuminations. The manuscript
survived fires and the suppression of monasteries, but was destroyed in the 1870 bombardment of
Strasbourg. All that exists now are copies of parts of the manuscript, made between c. 1840 and 1870
for the French antiquarian Comte Antoine de Bastard, now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France. Cf. Green, Hortus deliciarum (1979).
music. This is what the Greek philosophers called, as we saw, the music of the
spheres. This ‘music’ was not literally audible, but it was in fact a harmonic
concept. Boethius (see Ill. 4), the most important authority on music in the
Middle Ages, compiled Greek sources dealing with this concept in his book
De institutione musica [The Fundamentals of Music], written in the early sixth
century. For Boethius, music was a science of numbers, with numerical ratios
and proportions determining intervals, consonances, scales and tuning. He
divided music into three types:
1. musica mundana (the music of the universe, or the music of the spheres)
2. musica humana (the internal music of the human body and soul)
3. musica instrumentalis (audible music, made by singers and musical instru-
mentalists)
The sun, the moon, and the planets were thought to revolve around the earth,
all in their proper spheres. These spheres were thought to be related by the
whole-number ratios of pure musical intervals, thus creating musical harmony.
The ninth muse, Thalia, appears at the bottom, together with the four ele-
ments (ignis, aer, aqua, terra). The expressions in the middle columns, relating
to Archimedes and the affections of the musical modes, are in line with the
columns framing the title page.
In his Practica musicae, planets, tones, bodily fluids, muses, and modal
characteristics from the theory of affections are all brought together within one
6
Manuscript copies of De Institutione in a great many medieval libraries testify to the work’s pres-
tige. Particularly noticeable is the fact that it remained a core text for the teaching of music theory at
Oxford until 1856, according to Robert Reilly (‘Is Music Sacred?’ The Philadelphia Society, National
Meeting, Chicago, April 30, 2000).
model.7 The planet Mars was related to anger, Jupiter to fortune and bringer of
happiness, etc. (see Ill. 5). These ideas continued to play a role in music long
after the invention of the telescope, e.g. in the work of Gustav Holst.
Great composers of the Renaissance were still clearly connected to the
Quadrivium in their own times. The greatest composer of the fifteenth cen-
tury, Johannes [Jean de] Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497), who served the kings of
France for almost half a century, was celebrated as a singer, composer, and
teacher of many composers of the next generation. His Missa prolationum, for
instance, was a technical tour de force, being notated in two voices but sung in
four, using the four prolations of mensural notation. But let us avoid technical
details and concentrate on how he was described by a contemporary visitor. In
all books on music, Ockeghem is shown as one of nine singers from the French
7
Cf. http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/16th/GAFHAR4_TEXT.html; for a short discussion of
the modes and their meaning within this context, cf. Clement, ‘Affect en muziek’ (2008).
8
I do not know of any exceptions in scholarly books. However, my esteemed teacher Willem Elders
has shown that this is highly unlikely by pointing out that the man in the scarlet robe must be
Ockeghem. See Elders, ‘Fantasierijk’ (1997). I am much indebted to him for drawing my attention
to this.
New perspectives
Completely new perspectives were opened in the history of western music
by the Florentine camerata (camerata meaning ‘circle’ or ‘association’). A
Florentine scholar, the historian and humanist Girolamo Mei (1519-1594),
who worked in Rome as a cardinal’s secretary, embarked on a thorough investi-
gation of Greek music and in 1572 he started to communicate his thoughts to
colleagues, notably Giovanni de’ Bardi, Count of Vernio (1534-1612), patron
of music and art, and Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520-1591), a lutenist, composer,
music theorist, singer, and teacher. In the same year Vincenzo Galilei migrated
to Florence.
Bardi was the founder of a Florentine academy where a group of scholars
and musicians discussed literature, science, and the arts, particularly the music
of Greek antiquity, and where musicians performed as well; the whole group
was active in promoting monodic music shortly before 1600.11 The meetings
9
Johannes Ockeghem en zijn tijd (Dendermonde 1970), 110 (quoted after Elders ‘Fantasierijk’
(1997), 8).
10
Elders, ‘Fantasierijk’ (1997), 10.
11
The ideas seem to resemble those of the Middelburg Roosevelt Academy – the new (2004) interna-
tional Honors College of Utrecht University, and the only Liberal Arts College in the Netherlands
where applied music is also taught.
12
Is it not striking that in the Netherlands there was also a father and a son who took an interest
in both optical instruments and music? Christiaan Huygens needs no further introduction in this
volume, but Constantijn Huygens introduced with his Pathodia sacra (a collection of music, printed
in France in 1647), the Basso continuo in France, which is not known by many people.
13
Unlike my friend Dr. Huib Zuidervaart (see above in this volume), I do not have to come up with
a list of candidates: in music there is just one.
14
Fine and well-known examples of Monteverdi’s music, performed in the times of the invention of
the telescope and of an equally groundbreaking importance, are his madrigal Cruda Amarilli, with
its use of unprepared dissonances to express words such as ‘cruda’ (cruel) and ‘ahi’ (alas), and ‘Vi
ricorda o boschi ombrosi’ from his opera L’Orfeo, which sets an early example of a strophic aria.
15
One of the many other authors to be mentioned here was of course Johannes Kepler (see above),
whose theories also stemmed to an important extend from his theological convictions. In his
Harmonices mundi he also wrote extensively about the musica univeralis or ‘music of the spheres’.
16
Cohen, Quantifying music (1984), 116.
17
Cf. Wilde, Geschichte der Optik, 1 (1838), 139, 154f., 170. In doing so, Rheita followed the
example of Sirtori, who had introduced the name ‘Johannes Lippersein’ in 1618 (cf. the above-men-
tioned contribution of Huib Zuidervaart in this volume). Rheita actually introduced a number of
crucial improvements in his work, leading to a real break-through in telescope design. First, Rheita
suggested a new and much better method of polishing lenses, leading to a strong reduction of devia-
tions; secondly (and even more importantly), he found that a compound ocular, composed of three
or four lenses, resulted in a much better quality than using only a single (compound) ocular.
18
There is of course much more to it. At the foreground left, there is Pythagoras while the lady
holding the cornet on the right side is Music. Both figures have musical instruments at their feet
(ancient and modern), while the men inside the opening in the centre represent the musica instru-
mentalis. Above them in the distance of the beach are nine satyrs and eight sea-gods. Slightly off to
the right, a shepherd speaks to a cliffside with a quote from Virgil ‘Pascite ut ante Boves’ (‘graze,
cattle, as before’), which bounces back as an echo ‘…oves’ – no doubt signifying Kircher’s extensive
interest in acoustics. Further to the right of that cliff, a long stone staircase leads to a landing on
which is perched Pegasus, ready to take flight in service to the muses. The central sphere contains
signs of the zodiac and a quote from Job: ‘Quis concentum coeli dormire faciet?’ (‘Who shall still
the harmony of the spheres?’) Apollo sits on top carrying a kithara in his right hand and panppies
in his left (compare this with Ill. 5 above). The 36 parts of the canon by Romano Micheli (with the
Latin indicating where the solution to the canon can be found) are broken down into four groups of
nine (3 × 3) voices: an hommage to the significance of the three-fold divinity, as well as to the nine
muses. More significantly, this canon pays hommage to a famous ‘lost’ 36-voice canon by Johannes
Ockeghem, the master of mensuration. Cf. Lowinsky, ‘Ockeghem’s Canon’ (1969).
19
The Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork: Psalm 19:2.
20
Already in his own times Schütz was famous, especially after the publication of his Symphoniae
Sacrae (1629). It has been claimed that a no lesser artist than Rembrandt painted him, but nowadays
this portrait is considered as dubious. Yet, there is a musician depicted (he is holding a roll of paper
with music notation) who looks like Schütz and matches his age.
21
On the website of the Heinrich-Schütz-Haus as well as in texts by other modern writers, Schütz’
presumed attendance is presented as a fact. Cf. e.g. http://heinrich-schuetz-haus.de/exponate/ex-
ponat_juli_2008.php.
22
Cf. Fechner, ‘Wie die Sonne‘ (1984).
23
The composer can be identified on a painting (1674) by the Dutch painter Johannes Voorhout
(1647-1723), now called ‘Musizierende Gesellschaft (Musical Party) in Hamburg’, with Buxtehude
playing the viola da gamba. See e.g. Snyder, Buxthehude (2007), 109ff. The painting is now in the
Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte.
24
According to Mattheson, Capellmeister (1739), 130.
25
The planets represented by Buxtehude must have been Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus,
Mercury, and the Moon. Cf. Spitta, Bach I, 259f.: ‘[...] den sieben Planeten – mehr kannte man
damals nicht, und rechnete Sonne und Mond mit hinzu – [wurden] bestimmte Charakter-
Eigenschaften beigemessen [...], nach denen die Astrologen ihren Einfluß auf das Leben und die
Geschicke der Menschen berechneten. Offenbar hat Buxtehude diese in den Suiten wiederspiegeln
und so sieben Charakterstücke schaffen wollen, was nach Matthesons Urtheil ihm durchaus gelun-
gen ist. [...] Daß die musikalische Kunst ein Spiegelbild des harmonisch geordneten Universums
sei, und ein geheimnißvoller Zusammenhang bestehe zwischen dem Leben und Weben der reinen
Töne und der ewigen Bewegtheit des Weltalls mit all seinen kreisenden Himmelskörpern in den
lebendurchgossenen unendlichen Räumen, dieser Gedanke hat von Alters her bis in die neueste
Zeit die tiefsinnigsten Geister erfüllt. [...]. Unsere Vermuthung würde sich noch befestigen, wenn
jene sieben Suiten auf die sieben verschiedenen Stufen der Tonleiter gegründet wären [...]. Dann
möchte eine directe Reminiscenz an das griechische Alterthum vorliegen: die Pythagoreer lehrten,
daß die Abstände der sieben Planetenbahnen den Verhältnissen der Töne der siebensaitigen Lyra
gleich seien. Leider ist wenig Aussicht vorhanden, daß das interessante Werk noch wieder zum
Vorschein kommt.’
It is very likely that Buxtehude was at least to some extent inspired here by the presence of an astro-
nomical clock in St. Mary’s, dating back to c. 1566 and considered to be a real treasure. It was located
behind the high altar in the ambulatory but was destroyed in 1942.
26
Cf. Holst, Gustav Holst (1969), 43.
27
Painful neuritis in his arm restricted Holst’s possibilities and in writing the score he was helped
by assistants.
28
This is the only title in the original full score, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; moreover the
individual movements only have the description of the planets (‘The bringer of war’, etc.) instead of
any mention of their names.
29
It was a private performance by the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult on
29 September 1918, and given to Holst as a present by Henry Balfour Gardiner.
30
For instance, a famous poem was later set to the ‘Jupiter music’, and the two have been insepa-
rable ever since. The first verse was played at the Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana, while its
second verse was sung at Princess Diana’s funeral: ‘And there’s another Country / I’ve heard of long
ago, / Most Dear to them that Love her, / most Great to them that Know. / We may not count her
Armies. / We may not see her King. / Her Fortress is a faithful Heart;/ her Pride is Suffering. / And
Soul by Soul and silently, / her shining Bounds increase / and her ways are ways of Gentleness /
and all her paths are Peace!’ But Holst’s work has also used over and over again in modern films and
media.
Compared to Buxtehude’s suite, the (presumed) order of the planets was changed;
Uranus and Neptune were added while the sun and the moon were left out.
Uranus was the first planet to be discovered by using a telescope. The an-
nouncement was made on 13 March 1781 by the British astronomer Sir William
Herschel (1738-1822), who had used a 15-centimetre telescope designed
and built by himself. Interestingly, Herschel was also a composer. When the
Middelburg medical doctor, anatomist and obstetrician Paulus de Wind (1767-
1797), who later (1792) became lecturer at the ‘Illustre School’ in Middelburg,
met Herschel during his stay in London (from the second half of 1790 until the
month of May the year after), Herschel kindly permitted him to look through
his telescopes31. De Wind described his visit on 9 April 1791 as follows:
Having intended a little trip for pleasure in company with Mr. Rowntree and Mr Saunders,
and with the cousin of the former, who is a Lawyer in the Temple, we departed, after hav-
ing taken some cold meat &c before, from London at 2 o’clock (being the Lawyer and I
in a Chaise with a horse, and the two others on horseback) and arrived at about 4 o’clock
in Kensington, Brentford &c at Crawford Bridge, where Men and Beasts refreshed a little,
and then we travelled to Slough, a village situated 2 miles from Windsor, where the famous
Dr. Herschel lived, whom we asked to see his instruments, to which he agreed most kindly.
His largest telescope is 40 feet long, and 4 feet ten inch in diameter, it is hanging at Pulleys
between two bucks, each 50 to 60 feet high, and besides the telescope a little house for the
Observatory on an edge of stone, being able to turn around in the way of a mill; the small
telescope of about 20 feet long, and the other Apparatus of proportion likewise attracted our
attention, but we had no opportunity to look through either of the instruments, however
the Doctor let us look through a small Telescope of 14 feet long, which he and his servant
rolled forward on wheels, and through which we saw Jupiter by the size of four to five inches
31
Cf. Michael Hoskin, ‘Herschel, William (1738–1822)’, Oxford DNB [accessed 1 March 2007].
Neptune was the first planet inferred from mathematical predictions rather
than by observations through a telescope, although Galileo had already re-
corded it as a background star during his observations of 1612 and 1613.
When Uranus did not travel as astronomers expected, the French mathema-
tician Urbain Joseph Le Verrier (1811-1877) suggested that the presence of
another, as yet unknown, massive planet could cause the observed errors in
Uranus’ orbit. He sent his predictions to Johann Gottfried Galle (1812-1910)
at the Berlin Observatory, who found Neptune directly in 1846.
Although the invention of the telescope clearly influenced Holst’s choice
of planets, it is crystal-clear that the movements were to express the ‘character’
of each planet as described in ancient history and in astrology. In the opening
movement (Mars) we meet battle music (with the god Mars being related to
war, and the ‘red’ planet to anger); the music for Venus is much quieter, based
on the work by Alan Leo, who described Venus as creating orderly and har-
monic motion; Mercury – the only entirely autograph movement in the full
score – seems to flit swift-footed through this piece; the spirit of Jupiter’s music
seems to be much in keeping with the astrological significance of Jupiter as the
planet of benevolence and generosity. The musical representation of Saturn is
characteristic for its sad procession and waves of sound receding into the far
distance, while the next movement (Uranus) testifies of humour spilling over
into flamboyant orchestral excess. The final movement (Neptune) creates a
sense of a floating cascade through empty space, through Neptune’s watery
32
Translation after the transcription in an unpublished small thesis (2007) by Roosevelt Academy
student Gerda Joosse, supervised by Dr. Tassilo Erhardt, who kindly draw my attention to it):
‘Voorgenomen hebbende om in gezelschap met Mr Rowntree en Mr Saunders, en met den eer-
stens Neev, een Advocaat in de Temple, een klein pleiziertochtje te doen, reeden wy, na vooraf
eenig koud vleesch &c, genuttigd te hebben, ten 2 uuren uit London (zynde de Advocaat en ik
in een Chaise met een paard, en de twee andere te paard gezeten) en arriveerden om 4 uuren over
Kensington, Brentford &c aan Crawford Bridge alwaar Menschen en Beesten zich een weinig ver-
fristen, en waarna wy verder reeden tot Slough, een dorp 2 mylen van Windsor gelegen, en waar
de vermaarde Dr Herschel woond, by wien wy belet vroegen om zyne instrumenten te zien, ’t geen
hy ons zeer vriendelyk accordeerde. Zyn grootste Telescoop is 40 voet lang, en 4 voet tien duym in
Diameter, het hangd aan Katrollen tusschen twee bokken, die 50 a 60 voet hoog zyn, en benevens
het Telescoop, een huysje voor d’Observatory op een steene rand in de manier van een molen rond-
draayen kunnen[d]; den kleinen Telescoop van omtrend 20 voet lang, en d’andere Apparatus na
proportie trok insgelyks onze attentie, doch door geen van beide hadden wy occasie te zien, echter
liet de Doctor ons zien door een klein Telescoop van 14 voet lang, hetgeen hy en zyn knecht op
wielen voortrolden, en waardoor wy Jupiter ter grootte van vier a vyf duim diameter, benevens drie
zyner satelliten zagen. Wy gingen vervolgens in ons logement eeten, en na bed’.
33
Pluto was discovered in 1930, four years before Holst’s death. He expressed no interest in writ-
ing an additional movement for it, having become disillusioned by the popularity of his suite and
believing that it drew attention away from his other works. Many other composers did, and the
Holst specialist and composer Colin Matthews wrote an eighth movement for the Suite, entitled
‘Pluto, the Renewer’, dedicated to Holst’s daughter Imogen. It was first performed in Manchester,
on 11 May 2000. However, in 2006 Pluto was offically demoted by the International Astronomical
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360 bibliography
The authors
364 index
Gorlaeus, David 88 Ilardi, Vincent 5, 94, 115, 172-173, 261, 292
Goüye, Thomas 316, 318-319 Isabella, Infante of Spain 16, 173, 176, 180
Goverts, Marten 23 Isenbach, Johannes 56
Govi, Gilberto 273 Iyeyasu, see Tokugawa
Grassi, Orazio 208, 215, 219, 228, 229 James I, King of England 63, 305
Gregory, James 295, 297-300 Jansen, Sacharias (brass founder in Amsterdam)
Grienberger, Christoph 199 39
Groot, De, see Grotius Jansen, Zacharias 9, 23-39, 42-44, 60, 110,
Groslot de l’Isle, Jerome 206-207 113, 267
Grotius, Hugo 21, 80 Jansen, Willem 24
Gruterus, Jacobus 56 Japikse, Herman 37, 42
Gualdo, Paolo 17-18, 195, 204, 220 Jeannin, Pierre 15-16
Gualterotti, Raffael 9, 19 Johann Georg I, Elector of Saxony 243
Guercino, see Barbieri John, Prester 169
Guilleuma, Josep M. Simon de 6 Jonge, Johannes de 61-65
Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden 231, 248-249 Jonson, Ben 179-182
Habert de Montmor, Henri Louis 250 Jorink, Eric 70
Haene, Catharina de 23, 24 Kanter, Phillippuszoon Johannes de 26, 29-32,
Haghe, Govaert van der 38, 48-50, 65, 261 41-42
Hainhofer, Philipp 236-237, 243-245 Karl I, Prince of Liechtenstein 239
Hamel, Jean Baptiste du 292 Keil, Inge 235, 250, 252
Harkness, Deborah 139 Keizer, Jacob de 310
Harriot, Thomas 18, 88, 181, 183, 186, 190, Kepler, Johannes 7-8, 18-20, 43, 88, 114, 147-
197, 199, 200 151, 153, 156-157, 160-165, 190-191,
Harris, Thomas 300 196- 197, 200, 239, 262, 281-283, 285-
Harting, Pieter 32-34, 42 297, 299, 300, 323, 332-334
Heikamp, Detlef 244 Keteltas, Barent 87
Henri IV, King of France 167 King, Henry 234
Henry, Prince of England 186, 188 Kircher, Athanasuis 333-334
Herigone, Pierre 288, 292 Koning, Th. 28
Herschel, Sir William 338-339 Korey, Michael 5, 231, 233, 245-246
Heurck, Henri van 34 Krosigk, Bishop Bernhard von 97
Heurnius, Johannes 117, 125 Lambrechtsen van Ritthem, Nicolaas Cornelis
Hevelius, Johannes 250, 288, 292 27, 29-30, 41
Hildesheim, Bishop Bernward of 95-96 Lansbergen, Philip(pus) 58-60, 88, 261, 269
Hirsch, Andreas 333 Lenccio, Johanne Baptista 18
Hitzenbach, see Isenbach Leo, Alan 337, 340
Hodges, Ian 309, 315 Leria 312
Hohenberg (Hohenbourg), Herrad von 324 Lessing, Julius 236
Holst, Gustav 323, 328, 336-340 Leitao, Henrique 233
Hooft, Pieter Corneliszoon 178 Le Verrier, Urbain Joseph 339
Hoorn, Pieter van 91, 302, 311 Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van 71
Horky, Martin 196 Libavius, Andreas 177-179
Horrocks, Jeremiah 197 Lindberg, David 117, 120, 147
Hortensius, Martinus 302-303 Lindblad, Bertil 249
Hove, Marten van, see Hortensius Lipperhey, Abraham 23
Huygen van Linschoten, Jan 302 Lipperhey, Claes 23
Huygens, Constantijn 21, 77, 264, 331 Lipperhey, Hans passim
Huygens, Christiaan 263-264, 295-296, 299, Lipperhey, Hans junior 23
331 Lipperhey, Susanna 23
Ibn al-Haytham, Abu Ali al-Hasan 147, 148 l’Obel, Matthias de (Lobelius) 63
index 365
Lochorst, Huybert van 311 Monteverdi, Claudio 332-333
Lombard, Peter 325 Montmor, Henri Louis Habert de 250
Loof, Johannes de 25 Moriaen, Johan 265
Lothar II, Holy Roman Emperor 95 Moritz, der Gelehrte, Landgraf of Hessen-Kassel
Louis XIV, King of France 289, 315 335
Louwman, Peter 234, 242, 246-248, 254 Moucheron, Balthasar de 62
Lower, Sir William 18 Mulerius, Nicolaas 20
Lowyssen, Lowys 9, 24, 28, 44 Murdison, John 56
Luyken, Casper 310 Nakamura, Tsuko 234, 251, 308
Luyken, Jan 314, 318 Narai, see Somdet Phra Narai
Magini, Giovanni Antonio 7, 170, 175-176, Newskaja, Nina 250
180, 186, 195-196 Newton, Isaac 147, 282, 295, 299-300
Magiotti, Raffaello 272, 274, 276 Noirot, Jacques 62
Magdalena Sibylla, Electress of Saxony 242 Obizzo, Antonio (Obisy) 49-50
Magnus, Albertus 177 Ockeghem, Johannes (Jean de) 328-330, 334
Magnus, Jacob Simonsz 15 Oenema, Tinco (van) 15
Maignan, Emanuel 292 Oldenbarnevelt, Johan van 53-54, 76, 81
Malet, Antoni 8, 281, 283, 286-287, 299 Orleans, Cherubin d' 282, 288-293, 295
Manzini, Carlo Antonio 272, 282, 288, 292- Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor 95-96
295 Parduyn, Simon 61
Marie de Médicis, Queen of France 176 Parduyn, Willem Jaspers 62-63, 65
Marini, Giovanni Filippo de 312 Pasquetti, Jacomo 48
Mariotte, Edmé 298 Paul V (Camillo Borghese), Pope at Rome 17,
Marius, Simon 9, 18, 38, 87-88, 183, 201 304
Martens, Hans 24, 43 Pecham, John 159
Maurits, Count of Nassau, Prince of Orange Peiresc, see Fabri de Peiresc
(1618) 3-5, 13-15, 17, 19-20, 24, 29, 43, Pelletier, Charles 64
53, 73-76, 87, 90, 92, 183, 203, 215, 218, Pelling, Nick 6, 9-10
220, 301, 303-304 Peter the Great, Czar of Russia 250
Maurolico, Franciscus 292 Petrosani, Francesco 180
Mayall, John 36 Pfüllmair, Jacob 106
Mazzoleni, Marcantonio 188 Philip II, Count of Holland, King of Spain 16,
Medici, Antonio de 192, 277 52, 301
Medici, Giuliano de 199 Philip III, King of Spain 52
Meertens, Maeyken 24, 57, 61, 63 Philipp II, Duke of Pomerania 236
Mehlführer, Gabriel 236 Philippe-Guillaume (Philips Willem), Prince of
Mei, Girolamo 330 Orange (1584) 76.
Mercurialis, Hieronymus 116-124, 127 Picinelli, Bernardo 109
Mersenne, Marin 260 Piersanti, Alessandro 188
Metius, Jacob Adriaensz 9, 15, 19, 20-22, 24, Pietersz, Frans 90-91
26, 28, 30, 43, 84-87, 90-92, 110, 113, Pignoria, Lorenzo 17-18, 204, 220
261 Plato 199, 321-323, 333
Meurs, Jacob van 25 Pombejra, Dhiravat na 314
Meyvaert, Franciscus 57 Porta, Giambaptista della 7, 9, 18, 134-135,
Magiotti, Raffaello 272, 274, 276-277 140, 160, 175, 177, 184-186, 188, 292
Micanzio, Fulgenzio 225-226 Poterie, Antoine de la 250
Mill, Allan 132 Prado, Hortensia del 60
Milton, John 323 Prester, John 170-172, 182
Miotto, Anthonio 49 261 Pril, Sara du 23
Molesini, Giuseppe 8, 240, 261, 271, 273 Priuli, Geronimo 222-223, 225, 228
Moll, Gerrit 30-32, 41-42
366 index
Ptolemy, Claudius 150, 160, 162-163, 165, Schyrl(aeus) de Rheita, Antonius Maria 11, 22,
287, 321 113, 251, 252, 288, 292, 334
Crispijn Queborn 76 Sechini, Bernardo 226
Quietanus, Johannes Remus 197 Serlé, Cornelis Johannes 23, 27-28, 30-31
Rama IV Mongkut, King of Siam 319-320 Settle, Tom 6, 9
Ramatibodi, see Uthong Ramatibodi Shakespeare, William 323
Rashed, Roshdi 147, 153, 158, 162 Sibylla, Magdalena 242-243
Reael, Laurens 302-303 Sirtori, Girolamo 3, 10, 18-19, 22, 26, 41, 43,
Redi, Abt 32 88, 107, 187, 261, 262, 272, 274, 276,
Reeves, Eileen 6, 129, 133, 167, 186, 191, 207, 334
209, 217 Sluiter, Engel 1 6-18, 20, 133, 176, 231, 302,
Reilly, Robert 327 304
Renesse van der Aa, Gerard van 15 Smith, A. Mark 7, 147, 300, 305
Rethaan Macaré, Pieter Johannes 32 Snel(lius), Willibrord 88, 147
Rheita, see Schyrl de Rheita Snel(lius), Rudolph 18, 40, 60, 79, 88
Ricci, Matteo 308 Snijder, Zacharias 32-34, 42
Riekher, Rolf 233-234, 236, 239 Socrates 177, 206-207, 321
Rienitz, Joachim 131, 133 Soest, Konrad von 105
Risner, Friedrich 148, 153, 155, 158-159 Somdet Phra Chao Songtham, King of Ayutthaya
Roberval, Gilles Personne de 298 314
Roels, Willem 63 Somdet Phra Ekathotsarot, King of Ayutthaya
Roels, Tobias 61-65 303, 314
Roels, Tobias jr 63 Somdet Phra Narai, King of Ayutthaya 314-
Roget, Juan 6 320
Ronan, Colin 7, 131-133, 136, 144 Somer, Jehan 62 65
Ronchi, Vasco 93, 102, 107, 111, 189, 240, Sophia Elisabeth, Duchess of Braunschweig
246, 247, 281, 282 245
Roomen, Adriaan van 176 Spina, Alessandro 105
Rosen, Edward 20, 115, 204, 211-212, 218, Spinola, Ambrogio de 12-14, 16, 65, 81, 83,
222-223 176, 303
Rotunda, Mauricius 98 Spinola, Gaston 176, 180
Rowntree, Mr 339 Staës, Robert 173, 176
Rudd, Eugene 254 Stevin, Simon 57-58, 78-79, 83-84, 88
Rudolf II of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor 79, Stolle, Heinrich 232, 238-239
233 Strozzi, Piero 331
Ruggieri, Michele 308 Stutzer, Johan Arnold 307
Sabra, Abdelhamid I. 147 Suryawongsa, King 311
Sachariassen, Johannes 23-25, 31, 34, 36, 38, Swinden, Jan Hendrik van 30-31, 41
42-43, 60, 267-269 Tachard, Guy 315-319
Saris, John 174, 304-306 Tengnagel, Frans Gansneb 79
Sarpi, Paolo 7-8, 16, 167, 175-176, 186-187, Thales 321
203-209, 214-217, 219-221, 223-228 Theile, Johann 336
Saunders, Mr 339 Thuret, Isaac 316
Savery, Roelant 64 Tokugawa Hidetada, second Shogun of Japan
Schall von Bell, Johann Adam 309-310 305
Scheiner, Christoph 18, 183, 197, 199-200, Tokugawa Ieyasu, first Shogun of Japan 174,
263, 264, 288-289, 292 251, 305-306
Schellinger, Jan Cornelisz 91 Tokugawa Yoshinao, Japanese warlord 251
Schliemann, Heinrich 94 Tomkis, Thomas 171-172
Schütz, Heinrich 335-336 Torricelli, Evangelista 8, 232, 235, 254, 271-
279
index 367
Trumbull, William 180 Zoomers, Henk 8, 14, 81, 231, 301, 303
Turner, Gerard L’Estrange 7, 24, 43, 132, 136, Zucchi, Niccolò 292
138, 234, 250 Zuidervaart, Huib 3, 61, 81, 91, 242, 247-248,
Urban II, Pope 97 261, 332
Uthong Ramatibodi, King of Ayutthaya 313
Valignano, Allessandro 308
Vanagt, Katrien 7, 115, 126
Van Helden, Albert 1, 3-11, 15-16, 18-20, 22,
24, 25, 38-39, 41, 43, 45, 81, 83-86, 88,
91, 110, 129, 132-134, 137-140, 179, 183,
187, 194, 196-198, 203, 208-210, 213,
215, 218, 220, 226-228, 234, 240-242,
254, 271, 279, 282, 303
Venne, Jan Pietersz van de 61
Verbiest, Ferdinand 310
Vermij, Rienk 5, 11
Vertue, George 205
Vesalius, Andreas 126
Vestu, Nicolle de 330
Vinta, Belisario 189-190
Visvliet, Meinard van 27
Vivo, Filippo de 205, 226
Volder, Burchard de 296
Waard, Cornelis de 3-4, 10, 12, 17, 18, 23-24,
26, 37-42, 44, 49, 60, 91, 110, 257-260,
262-269, 302
Walaeus, Antonius 56, 57
Walchius, Johannes 185
Warner, Walter 297
Welser, Marc 22
Whitaker, Ewan 131, 133, 190
Wiedemann, Konrad 2 52
Wiesel, Johann 113, 244, 252-253
Wijnman, Hendrik Fredrik 24, 39
Wijntgis, Melchior 71
Willach, Rolf 5, 6, 11, 39-40, 45, 88, 93-94,
143, 173, 178, 186, 226, 231-235, 237,
239-240, 245, 247-249, 252-254, 261,
288
Willem Lodewijk, Count of Nassau 75, 83
William the Silent, Prince of Orange 13, 46,
53, 55, 63, 74-76, 301
Wind, Paulus de 338-339
Winsemius, Pierius 20-21
Witelo, Erazmus Ciolek 148-160, 292
Wrangel, Carl Gustav 253
Wren, Christopher 196
Wuysthoff, Gerrit 311-312
Wynants, Wilhelmus 261
Yi, Yi 308
Zarlino, Gioseffo 331
368 index