Christiaan Huygens – A family affair - Proeven van Vroeger

again until 1665 – giving the public two treatises on the Horologium. 333 Now, as has been
remarked upon in Chapter V, publication was not as important as it is today and scientific
correspondence and theoretical and experimental meetings offered equal or more “visibility.” It
also mattered that experimental and instrument claims were assigned much quicker when the
person making the claims would show the experiment or the working of the instrument in
person – something Christiaan discovered on several occasions. 334 It turns out that the role for
his father and brothers was important in this respect too – on several occasions, even when
rather important, they would be in charge of showing instruments and experiments to other
gentlemen of natural philosophy and thus on occasion be responsible for preserving the secret
of the working of the different instruments. In the competitive culture of early modern
ambitious families, 335 the “team-work” of the Huygens may be deemed remarkable.
The ongoing chapter deals with the family’s teamwork in the business of making,
distributing and showing instruments. At times residing in three or four different countries, the
four men all seem to have had different, hardly negligible roles in establishing Christiaan’s
alluring international status as an inventor. Furthermore, having discussed earlier the courtly
circumstances in which Christiaan and his family functioned, the issues of patronage and
privileges for instruments and inventions will be discussed in the last chapter of this thesis.
333 The already mentioned HUYGENS, C. (1665a) Extrait d'une lettre du 26 février à Const. Huygens
père. Journal des Sçavants. and HUYGENS, C. (1665b) Kort onderwijs aengaende het gebruyck der Horologien -
Instructions concerning the use of pendulum-watches, for finding the longitude at sea.
334 The air-pump, England: SHAPIN, S. & SCHAFFER, S. (1985) Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes,
Boyle, and the experimental life : including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by
Simon Schaffer, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press., p266 (see note 370 below). In the
telescope-controversy with Divini/Campani the wish at the Accademia del Cimento was expressed for a
paragone in Florence, but distances were too great: RIGHINI BONELLI, M. L. & VAN HELDEN, A.
(1981) Divini and Campani: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of the Accademia del Cimento. Annali
Dell'Istituto E Museo Di Storia Della Scienza Di Firenze, 1-176. p13. A very striking example that shows how
important Huygens’s presence/absence was, can be seen in the way in which Huygens was being treated
during his request for the privilege for his horologium in England in 1675: ILIFFE, R. (1992) 'In the
warehouse': Privacy, property and priority in the early Royal Society. History of Science..
335 In the higher social ranks affection and trust were not self-evident characteristics within families. The
system of primogeniture (inheritance of the eldest son) and other distributive traditions could seriously
affect relations between siblings. See, for instance, POLLOCK, L. A. (2001) Parent-Child Relations. IN
KERTZER, D. I. & BARBAGLI, M. (Eds.) The history of the European family. New Haven, Yale
University Press., p213-4. It seems that Constantijn Huygens Sr. managed to prevent envy affect the
bonds between his children.
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