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The Origins of the Telescope The origins of the telescope origins of the telescope royal netherlands academy of arts and sciences, 2010 i History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands, volume 12 The seriesHistory 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. Titles in this series 1. Rienk Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans. The reception of the new astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575-1750. 2002, isbn 90-6984-340-4 2. Gerhard Wiesenfeldt, Leerer Raum in Minervas Haus. Experimentelle Naturlehre an der Universität Leiden, 1675-1715, 2002, isbn 90-6984-339-0 3. Rina Knoeff, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738). Calvinist chemist and physician. 2002, isbn 90-6984-342-0 4. Johanna Levelt Sengers, How fluids unmix. Discoveries by the School of Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes. 2002, isbn 90-6984-357-9 5. Jacques L.R. Touret and Robert P.W. Visser, editors, Dutch pioneers of the earth sciences. 2004, isbn 90-6984-389-7 6. Renée E. Kistemaker, Natalya P. Kopaneva, Debora J. Meijers and Georgy Vilinbakhov, editors, The Paper Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St Peterburg (c. 1725-1760), Introduction and Interpretation. 2005, isbn 90-6984-424-9, isbn dvd 90-6984-425-7, isbn Book and dvd 90-6984-426-5 7. Charles van den Heuvel, ‘De Huysbou.’ A reconstruction of an unfinished treatise on architecture, town planning and civil engineering by Simon Stevin. 2005, isbn 90- 6984-432-x 8. Florike Egmond, Paul Hoftijzer and Robert P.W. Visser, editors, Carolus Clusius. Towards a cultural history of a Renaissance naturalist, 2007, isbn 978-90-6984-506-7 9. Lissa Roberts, Simon Schaffer, Peter Dear, editors, The mindful hand: inquiry and invention from the late Renaissance to early industrialisation. 2007, isbn 978-90- 6984-483-1 10. Dirk van Delft, Freezing physics. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and the quest for cold. 2007, isbn 978-90-6984-519-7 11. Patricia E. Faasse, In splendid isolation. A history of the Willie Commelin Scholten Phytopathology Laboratory 1894-1992. 2008, isbn 978-90-6984-541-8 12. Albert van Helden, Sven Dupré, Rob van Gent & Huib Zuidervaart (eds.), The origins of the telescope, 2010, isbn 978-90-6984-615-6 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 Koninklijke Nederlandse KNAW Press Akademie van Wetenschappen Amsterdam 2010 origins of the telescope royal netherlands academy of arts and sciences, 2010 iii © Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam 2010 Some rights reserved. Usage and distribution of this work is defined in the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0 Netherlands. To view a copy of this licence, visit: http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nl/ 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. pdf available on www.knaw.nl isbn 978 90 6984 615 6 e-isbn 978 90 4851 428 1 nur 911 Typesetting: Ellen Bouma, Alkmaar 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 Klaas van Berkel The city of Middelburg, cradle of the telescope 45 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 Albert Van Helden Galileo and the telescope 183 Mario Biagioli Did Galileo copy the telescope? A ‘new’ letter by Paolo Sarpi 203 Marvin Bolt & Michael Korey The world’s oldest surviving telescopes 231 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 The authors 361 Index 363 vi contents Introduction In November 1614 the Harderwijk-born Dutchman Ernst Brinck (1582-1649), former secretary of the Dutch consul in Constantinopel, visited Florence. As an educated person (Brinck spoke no less than ten languages) he collected the autographs of renowned scholars in his Album Amicorum. During his visit, Brinck introduced himself to the famous Italian scholar Galileo Galilei. In the years following the invention of the telescope, Galileo’s reputation had soared as a consequence of his observations with the newly invented instrument. Things went as Brinck desired. He received Galileo’s autographic inscription, together with a sketch of one Galileo’s telescopic discoveries: Jupiter’s four moons.1 Galileo’s depiction of Jupiter’s moons, presented in a way resembling the Copernican representation of the solar system (ill. 1), nicely illustrates the rapid development of astronomy since the advent of the telescope, first dem- onstrated at the end of September during a peace conference in The Hague. In the intervening six years, the instrument not only had amazed people all over Europe by its capacity to enlarge distant objects, but the device also had quickly revealed unanticipated celestial phenomena. The heavens contained far more stars than expected, and a range of spectacular discoveries had been made: lunar mountains, moons orbiting Jupiter, the phases of Venus, spots on the Sun, to name but the most famous. These phenomena not only had been observed, but in the hands of Galileo, they had led to interpretations with far- reaching cosmological implications.2 Almost immediately after its invention, the telescope evolved from a mere optical toy into a ‘scientific instrument,’ an instrument of a new type which at the time was called ‘philosophical’: the manipulation of such instruments al- lowed scholars to attain natural philosophical truth. In this way, the telescope 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. origins of the telescope royal netherlands academy of arts and sciences, 2010 1 Ill. 1. Galileo’s inscription in Ernst Brinck’s ‘Album Amicorum’ (1614) [Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague] 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.
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