Table Of ContentFrom Earth-Bound to Satellite
History of Science
and Medicine Library
VOLUME 23
Scientific Instruments
and Collections
Studies Published under the Auspices of
the Scientific Instrument Commission
General Editor
Giorgio Strano
Museo Galileo, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence
Editorial Board
Stephen Johnston, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
Mara Miniati, Museo Galileo, Istituto e Museo di Storia
della Scienza, Florence
Alison Morrison-Low, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh
VOLUME 2
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl.hsml
From Earth-Bound
to Satellite
Telescopes, Skills and Networks
Edited by
Alison D. Morrison-Low
Sven Dupré
Stephen Johnston
Giorgio Strano
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover illustration: Large transit instrument of Berlin Observatory in Potsdam-Babelsberg
(“Astronomische und Astrophysikalische Instrumente—Astronomische Optik”, Astro 40, Berlin,
1924, p. 46).
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
From Earth-bound to satellite : telescopes, skills, and networks / edited by Alison D.
Morrison-Low . . . [et al.].
p. cm. — (History of science and medicine library ; v. 23)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-21150-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Telescopes—History. I. Morrison-Low, A. D.
QB88.F86 2012
522’.209—dc23
2011037982
ISSN 1872-0684
ISBN 978 90 04 21150 6
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
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Fees are subject to change.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ............................................................................ vii
Notes on Contributors ...................................................................... xvii
Foreword ............................................................................................. xxi
Alison Morrison-Low
Introduction: Writing the History of the Telescope: Makers,
Markets and Mapping .................................................................. xxiii
Sven Dupré
Colour Plates I–XIII
Galileo’s Shopping List: An Overlooked Document about
Early Telescope Making ............................................................... 1
Giorgio Strano
Johann Wiesel’s Telescopes and his Clientele .............................. 21
Inge Keil
The ‘Invisible Technician’ Made Visible: Telescope Making in
the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-century Dutch
Republic .......................................................................................... 41
Huib J. Zuidervaart
The Art of Polishing: Practice and Prose in Eighteenth-century
Telescope Making .......................................................................... 103
Jim A. Bennett
Networks of Telescope Makers and the Evolution of Skill:
Evidence from Observatory and Museum Collections ........... 123
Gloria Clifton
Scoping Longitude: Optical Designs for Navigation at Sea ....... 141
Richard Dunn
vi contents
Following the Stars: Clockwork for Telescopes in the
Nineteenth Century ...................................................................... 155
James Caplan
Telescopes Made in Berlin: From Carl Bamberg to Askania ..... 177
Gudrun Wolfschmidt
Wide-Field Photographic Telescopes: The Yale, Harvard and
Harvard/Smithsonian Meteor and Satellite Camera
Networks ......................................................................................... 195
Teasel Muir-Harmony, David H. DeVorkin and
Peter Abrahams
The Making of Space Astronomy: A Gift of the Cold War ....... 235
Robert W. Smith
General Index ..................................................................................... 251
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Colour Plates I–XIII can be found in a separate section following
page xxx.
I. Ottavio Leoni, Portrait of Galileo Galilei, 1624 (Florence,
Biblioteca Marucelliana, vol. H disegni).
II. Galileo Galilei’s broken objective lens, 1609–1610, with frame,
1677 (Florence, Museo Galileo, inv. n. 2429).
III. Above: Johann Wiesel’s only surviving telescopes; below: a part
of the decoration (Skokloster Castle, Sweden; fot. K.-A. Keil).
IV. French telescope with six drawtubes, signed on the objective cap
with the crowned monogram “AG” (maker not yet identified).
Length 34–128 cm, diameter 5.5 cm. Last quarter of the seven-
teenth century (Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes).
V. English telescope with seven drawtubes, signed “john: marshall *
lvdgat: street * london”. Length 1,83 m, diameter 7 cm,
ca. 1700. John Marshall had a workshop in Ludgate street,
London between 1685 and 1723. He was an apprentice of Jack
Dunning (Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes).
VI. Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656–1727), portrayed in 1682 by
Caspar Netscher in Paris (copy at Kurpfälzisches Museum,
Heidelberg).
VII. Pocket telescope with ‘fixed focal length’, unsigned, ca. 1700.
Tube made of lignum vitae with brass slides; length 26 cm,
diameter 4.5 cm (Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes).
Comparable pocket telescopes, or ‘Little Perspectives’, are
depicted on the 1683 trade card of the English instrument maker
John Yarwell. Probably these kind of small telescopes were also
used by sailors.
VIII. John Bird, quadrant, 1750, preserved at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich (Photograph E0403 © National Maritime Museum,
London).
IX. George B. Airy, designer, Ransomes & May, Ipswich, engineers,
Troughton & Simms, London, optical instrument makers,
Transit Circle, 1850, preserved at the Royal Observatory, Green-
wich (Photograph L2156-001 © National Maritime Museum,
London).
viii list of illustrations
X. William Chevasse’s observing platform, 1813 (Cambridge Uni-
versity Library, Board of Longitude Papers, RGO 14/36, fol. 51;
Reproduced by kind permission of the Science and Technology
Facilities Council and the Syndics of Cambridge University
Library).
XI. Filar micrometer used with the Marseille Observatory’s 1872
Eichens-Merz 26-cm refractor (Photograph Marc Heller, 2006
© Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur—Inventaire général).
XII. A duplicate of Hamburg Observatory for Caracas (today in Merida),
Venezuela, Askania, planning in the 1950s, 1960 to 1970s Schmidt
telescope for wide angle photography (Die Askania-Warte 18,
1961, no. 57, cover: Archive Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin).
XIII. The 94.5-inch primary mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope after
polishing and coating (Courtesy of NASA).
Figures 1–5 (for the article by Giorgio Strano):
1. Giovanni Battista della Porta, letter to prince Federico Cesi
dated August 28, 1609 (Rome, Biblioteca dell’Accademia
dei Lincei, Ms. N. 12, formerly Cod. Boncompagni 580,
fol. 326) .......................................................................................... 6
2. Scheme of the telescope from the Sidereus Nuncius: a:
Handwritten version by Galileo (Florence, Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale, Ms. Gal. 48, fol. 9r); b: Printed version
(G. Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius, Venice, 1610, p. 7r) ................ 7
3. Galileo’s shopping list (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale, Ms. Gal. 88, fol. 106r–107v) ...................................... 9
4. File for grinding (G. Sirtori, Telescopium, Frankfurt, 1618,
p. 50) .............................................................................................. 16
5. Tool with handle (G. Sirtori, Telescopium, Frankfurt, 1618,
p. 47) .............................................................................................. 17
Figures 1–5 ( for the article by Inge Keil):
1. Wiesel’s ship-lantern, made for Christian IV of Denmark
in 1640 (Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen) ................................ 25
2. The telescopes extended (Skokloster Castle, Sweden) ........... 30
3. A part of the telescopes (Skokloster Castle, Sweden) ............ 31
4. The plate with the adjusting marks for different eye-sight
(Skokloster Castle, Sweden) ....................................................... 32
list of illustrations ix
5. F. M. Grimaldi’s map of the Moon in G. B. Riccioli,
Almagestum novum, Bononiae, 1651 (Museo Galileo
Library, Florence) ......................................................................... 33
6. Bartholomäus Kilian, portrait of Johann Wiesel, 1660
(Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg) ................................... 37
Figures 1–16 ( for the article by Huib J. Zuidervaart):
1. Telescope on the Leiden quadrant, preserved without the
original optics (Museum Boerhaave, Leiden) ......................... 45
2. ‘Campanine’ (named after the Italian telescope maker
Guiseppe Campani) made in 1683, with an objective lens
ground by Christiaan Huygens. The iron plated drawtubes
were constructed by Cornelis Langendelf from The Hague
(Museum Boerhaave, Leiden) .................................................... 46
3. Tubes of plated iron, bequeathed in 1866 by the late
Zacharias Snijder to the Zeeuwsch Genootschap der
Wetenschappen (Zeeland Society of Arts and Sciences).
In 1866 the small tube (left) was tentatively identified by
Pieter Harting as the world’s oldest known microscope.
Most likely this small tube was the ocular tube of a long
seventeenth-century telescope, to which the two other tubes
(right) also belonged (from P. Harting, “Oude optische
werktuigen . . .”, 1867) .................................................................. 47
4. Snijder’s small iron tube, the only one that has survived
World War II (Zeeuws Museum, Middelburg) ...................... 48
5. Engraving representing a long Hartsoeker telescope with a
wooden tube, hoisted onto a mast. At the back a tube-less
or aerial telescope can also be seen, as well as a hand held
telescope (N. Hartsoeker, Proeve der Deurzicht Kunde,
Amsterdam, 1699) ........................................................................ 51
6. Detail of the portrait painting by Netscher (Pl. VI)
presenting several optical products of Hartsoeker’s Paris
workshop, among others two telescopes and two
microscopes ................................................................................... 53
7. Telescope objective lenses, ground by Nicolaas Hartsoeker.
Left: 50-feet lens for Leiden University, diameter 16.7 cm,
signed “Nicolaas Hartsoeker fecit pro academia lugd. Batav
lutet parisiorum 1688” (Nicolaas Hartsoeker made this for
the Leiden Academy from yellow [glass] from Paris),
