Talk:History of telescopes

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I know it needs a lot of work I beginned some edits but found a conflict with you. Ericd 22:34 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)

I've cutted this part :

William Molyneux, in his Dioptrica Nova (1692), p. 256, declares his opinion that Roger Bacon (who died circa 1294) did perfectly well understand all kinds of optic glasses, and knew likewise the method of combining them so as to compose some such instrument as our telescope. He cites a passage from Bacon's Opus Majus, p. 377 of Jebb's edition, 1733, translated as follows:- "Greater things than these may be performed by refracted vision."

For it is easy to understand by the canons above mentioned that the greatest objects may appear exceedingly small, and the contrary, also that the most remote objects may appear justat hand, and the converse; for we can give such figures to transparent bodies, and dispose them in such order with respect to the eye and the objects, that the rays shall be refracted and bent towards any place we please, so that we shall see the object near at hand or at any distance under any angle we please. And thus from an incredible distance we may read the smallest letters, and may number the smallest particles of dust and sand, by reason of the greatness of the angle under which we see them. . . . Thus also the sun, moon and stars may be made to descend hither in appearance, and to be visible over the heads of our enemies, and many things of the like sort, which persons unacquainted with such things would refuse to believe.?

Molyneux also cites from Bacon's Epistola ad Parisiensem, "Of the Secrets of Art and Nature," chap. 5:- "Glasses or diaphanous bodies may be so formed that the most remote objects may appear just at hand, and the contrary, so that we may read the smallest letters at an incredible distance, and may number things, though never so small, and may make the stars also appear as near as we please." These passages certainly prove that Bacon had very nearly, if not perfectly, arrived at theoretical proof of the possibility of constructing a telescope and a microscope; but his writings give no account of the trial of an actual telescope, nor any detailed results of the application of a telescope to an examination of the heavens. It has been pointed out by Dr Robert Smith, in his Complete System of Oplicks, that Bacon imagines some effects of telescopes which cannot be performed by them, and his conclusion is that Bacon never actually looked through a telescope.

Giambattista della Porta, in his Magia Naturalis, printed in 1558, makes the following remarkable statement:- If you do but know how to join the two (viz.,the concave and the convex glasses) rightly together, you will see both remote and near objects larger than they otherwise appear, aiid withal very distinct.?

Wolfius infers from this passage that its author was the first actual constructor of a telescope, and it appears not improbable that by happy accident Porta really did make some primitive form of telescope which excited the wonder of his friends. Here, however, his interest in the matter appears to have ceased, and he was unable either to appreciate the importance of his discovery or to describe the means by which the object was attained. Kepler, who examined Porta?s account of his concave and convex lenses by desire of his patron the emperor Rudolph, declared that it was perfectly unintelligible. Poggendorfi (Gesch. der Physik, p. 134) throws considerable doubt on the originality of Porta?s statement.

Thomas Digges, in his Stratioticus, p. 359, published in 1579, States that his father, Leonard Digges, ?among other curious practices had a method of discovering by perspective glasses set at due angles all objects pretty far distant that the sun shone upon, which lay in the country round about, ?and that this was by the help of a manuscript book of Roger Bacon of Oxford, who he conceived was the only man besides his father who knew it. There is also the following passage in the Pantometria (bk. i. chap. 21) of Leonard Digges 1 (originally published by his son. Thomas in 1571, and again in 1591):- ?Marvellous are the conclusions that may be performed by glasses concave and convex, of circular and parabolic forms, using for multiplication of beams sometime the aid of glasses transparent, which, by fraction, should unite or dissipate the images or figures presented by the reflection of other.?

He then describes the effects of magnification from a combination of lenses or mirrors, adding:- ? But of these conclusions I minde not here to intreate, having at large in a volume2 by itselfe opened the miraculous effects of perspective glasses.?

It is impossible to discredit the significance of these quotations, for the works in which they occur were published more than twenty years before the original date claimed for the discovery of the telescope in Holland.

Ericd 23:02 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)

Another cut : Descartes, in his treatise on Dia?ptrks (1637), attributes the discovery to Metius "about thirty years ago," whilst Schyraelus de Rheita, a Capuchin friar, in his Oculus Enoch el Eliae (Antwerp, 5645), gives the credit to Lippershey about 1609. Peter Borel, physician to the king of France, publishied at The Hague, in 1655, a work De Vero Telescopli Inventore. He was assisted in its preparation by William Borel, Dutch envoy at the court of France, and the latter declares, as the result of patient investigation, that Jansen and his father were the real inventors of the telescope in 1610, and that Lippershey only made a telescope after hints accidentally communicated to him of the details of Jansen?s invention. But the most trustworthy information on the subject is to be got from the researches of J. H. van Swinden.5 Briefly summarized, this evidence is as follows. In the library of the university of Leyden, amongst the MSS. of Huygens there is an original copy of a document (dated 17th October 1608) addressed to the statesgeneral by Jacob Andrianzoon (the same individual who is called James Metius by Descartes), petitioning for the exclusive right of selling an instrument of his invention by which distant objects appear larger and more distinct. He states that he had discovered the instrument by accident when engaged in making experiments, and had so far perfected it that distant objects were made as visible and distinct by his instrument as could be done with the one which had been lately offered to the states by a citizen and spectaclemaker of Middelburg. Among the acts of the states-general preserved in the government archives at The Hague, Van Swinden found that on 2nd October 1608 the assembly of the states took into consideration the petition of Hans Lippershey, spectacle-maker, a native of Wesel and an inhabitant of Middelburg, inventor of an instrument for seeing at a distance. On 4th October a committee was appointed to test the instrument, and on the 6th of the same month the assembly agreed to give Lippershey 900 forms for his instrument. Further, on the I 5th December of the same year they examined an instrument invented by Lippershey at their request to see with both eyes, and gave him orders to execute two similar instruments at 900 forms each; but, as many other persons had knowledge of this new invention to see at a distance, they did not deem it expedient to grant him an exclusive privilege to sell such instruments. The dates of these documents dispose effectually of Borel?s statement that Lippershey borrowed the ideas of Jansen in 1610. They also prove that, whilst Metius was in possession of a telescope, with which he may have experimented, about the time when Lippershey presented his application for patent rights, yet he makes no pretension that Lippershey borrowed the invention from him. The conclusion is that Lippershey was the first person who independently invented the telescope, and ?at the same time made the instrument known to the world. The common story is that Lippershey, happening one day, whilst holding a spectacle-lens in either hand, to direct them towards the steeple of a neighbouring church, was astonished, on looking through the nearer lens, to find that the weathercock appeared nearer and more distinct. He fitted the lenses in a tube, in order to adjust and preserve their relative distances, and thus constructed his first telescope. But doubt may be thrown on this traditional account owing to the further statement that the image of the weathercock so viewed was seen turned upside down. All

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In my opinion, it's should be better to delete and rewrite this one. -- looxix 01:42 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

I think it can be cuted a lot and then expanded. Ericd 08:12 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

Telescope is an object invented. The principles that make in possible (reflection, refraction, focusing of light, etc. were discovered, but not the telescope. One discovers something that exist in nature. Telescopes do not. --AstroNomer 07:25, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Belgian?

How can Galileo have heard a Belgian invented a telescope if Belgium and the concept of being "Beligian" did not exist then (unless of course he thought a Gallic tribesman from the first century BC had invented it).? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arthurian Legend (talk • contribs) 20:29, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tone Improved

This does need more work, but I've quickie-cleaned it up today in quite a few places. Is the tone of it still so bad? Nov 21, 2007 -Rstevec

P.S. No more Belgian.

After a little more cleanup I've removed the "inappropriate tone" tag, but left the "expert help needed" tag. -Rstevec (talk) 08:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sourcing

This article apparently goes back to the wild and woolly days (early 2000's) when people just grabbed passages from the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica and pasted them directly into Wikipedia. Perhaps someone who watches over this area could properly footnote the Brittanica passages? You can find them on Google. Opus33 (talk) 17:28, 4 June 2008 (UTC)