The Telescope before Galileo

The text of this letter, and most of the prime sources bearing on the invention of the telescope, that is, the authoritative pieces closest to the event in time and place, are to be found in the classic work of de Waard Cornelis Jr , De Uitvinding der Verrekijkers (The Hague, 1906), hereinafter cited as “ De Waard ”. Most of the same texts have conveniently been collected and published, along with English translations, in Van Helden Albert , The invention of the telescope (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, lxvii/4 (1977)), hereafter cited as “ Van Helden ”.

This famous newsletter (of which only two copies are known to exist, one used by De Waard and preserved in the Library of the University of Ghent, the other published in facsimile by Jake Zeitlin with an introduction by Stillman Drake in Los Angeles in 1976 under the title The unsung journalist and the origin of the telescope) shows on its title page 1608 as the year it was written, but nowhere the place or the month or day of publication. The first page of text carries the heading in bold letters, “De la Haye”, which does not mean that it was published at The Hague, but rather that the news came from there. This is proved by an entry under date of 18 November 1608, in de l'Estoile Pierre , Journal de l'Estoile pour le regne de Henri IV, xi: 1601–1609 (Paris, 1958), 393, which reads (my translation): “A friend of mine today showed me two news reports from The Hague in Holland, both written in longhand, of which … the second, not yet in print, is much shorter and the more remarkable, dealing with certain glasses presented to Count Maurice, through which one can discern and see objects three and four leagues distant as clearly as if they were only a hundred paces away. I have given an extract to someone who I believe will have it printed after the other one.” De Waard says (p. 204) that the Catalogue of the mathematical, historical and miscellaneous portion of the celebrated library of M. Guglielmo Libri, Part I (London, 1861) refers to a copy of this newsletter supposed to lie in the British Museum (but never found there), which named as printer Jean Gazeau in Lyon, France, and as date of publication 12 November 1608. This newsletter also provides the first report we have of (1) the results of the testing of Lipperhey's telescope (“Atop the tower of The Hague one can see clearly by means of the said glasses the clock of Delft and the windows of the Leyden church, even though these towns are distant, the one an hour and a half, the other three hours and a half from The Hague”), and (2) the first reference to the suitability of the instrument for astronomical observation (“… and even the stars, which normally we cannot see by reason of the feebleness and smallness of our vision, one can see by means of this instrument”).

See Biagioli Mario , Galileo, courtier: The practice of science in the culture of absolutism (Chicago, 1993), passim.

For a detailed scholarly account of these negotiations, see Van Eysinga W. J. M. , De Wording van het Twaalfjarig Bestand van 9 April 1609 (Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, n.s., lxvi/3 (1959)).

The main resolutions of the States General bearing on Lipperhey and the telescope were discovered by the archival searches of Jan Hendrik van Swinden, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam (1785–1823), who made them known in a public lecture, but died before he could edit and publish them. From the notes and copies he left behind Dr G. Moll, a colleague at Utrecht, published Van Swinden's findings, first in Dutch, but quickly translated and published in English under the title “On the first invention of telescopes, collected from the notes and papers of the late Professor Van Swinden by Dr. G. Moll of Utrecht”, The journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, i (1831), 319–32, 483–96. This publication was a landmark event, enabling scholars in the English-speaking world to revise their thinking about the identity of the inventor of the telescope.

French texts and English translations of these letters in Van Helden , 43. Cf. De Waard , 215–16.

In 1634 and 1655 (that is, 26 and 46 years respectively after the successful testing of Lipperhey's instrument in The Hague), Juhan Sachariassen, the mendacious son of the only other spectacle-maker in Middelburg in 1608, by his self-serving, contradictory, and totally uncorroborated statements before the Middelburg magistracy, claiming that his father Sacharias Janssen made the first telescopes in the Netherlands, either in 1590 or 1604, based on an Italian model bearing the inscription “an.° 1 [5]90”, tried to rob Lipperhey of the honour of having been the first to demonstrate a practical, functioning telescopic instrument before the world. See De Waard , 8–22, and Van Helden , 54–64.

See Van Eysinga , op. cit. (ref. 4), 92–94.

Hensen A. H. L. , “De Verrekijkers van Prins Maurits en van Aartshertog Albertus”, Mededeelingen van het Nederlandsch Historisch Instituut te Rome, iii (1923), 199–204. An ‘Italian mile’, or miglio, was one thousand paces.

An authority on the history of the European postal system says that by 1544 “in summer the post from Brussels to Rome took barely eleven days”. That service on this route was either much faster or slower by 1609 is doubtful. See Un poste européene avec les grands maîtres des postes de la famille de la Tour et Tassis (Musée Postal, Paris, 1978), 26.

Van Helden , 38, has the Dutch text with an English translation. Cf. De Waard , 173.

Van Helden , 39–40. For Metius see De Waard , 207–13.

De Waard , 184–8; the Latin text with an English translation in Van Helden , 47–48.

Waard De , 230.

North John , “Thomas Harriot and the first telescopic observations of sunspots”, in Shirley John W. (ed.), Thomas Harriot, Renaissance scientist (Oxford, 1974), 129–57, p. 136.

De l'Estoile , op. cit. (ref. 2), 393.

Van Helden , 44; De Waard , 231.

Sirtori Girolamo , Telescopium sive ars perficiendi (Frankfurt, 1618), 23–30. Text and English translation in Van Helden , 48–51.

Favaro A. (ed.), Le opere di Galileo Galilei (Florence, 1890–1909), x, no. 226, p. 250.

The italics are mine.

The letters occupy vols x-xviii of Favaro (ed.), Le opere di Galileo Galilei.

This letter in Busnelli Manho Duiho (ed.), “Un carteggio inedito di Fra Paolo Sarpi con l'ugenotto Francesco Castrino, Venezia-Parigi, 1608–1611”, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Letten ed Arti, lxxxvii/2 (1927), 1066–9, p. 1069.

Letters dated 6 January and 30 March 1609, ibid., 1159–60, note 2.

For these Jesuits, see respectively: (1) The Catholic encyclopedia, iv (New York, 1908), 9; (2) New Catholic encyclopedia, iii (New York, 1967), 923–4; (3) Phillips E. C. , “The correspondence of Father Christopher Clavius, S.J.”, Archivum historicum Societatis lesu, viii/ii (Rome, 1939), 193–222; (4) Favaro (ed.), Le opere di Galileo Galilei, x and xi, passim.

Phillips , op. cit. (ref. 24), 195–9; Favaro (ed.), Le opere di Galileo Galilei, xi, 31–35.

Favaro (ed.) Le opere di Galileo Galilei, xi, 31–35.

Ibid., x, no. 437.

Ibid., x, no. 227.

Ibid., x, no. 233.

Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (Munich, 1937), xvi, 302.