The Modern Anglo-Dutch Empire

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succeeded in building a telescope.
Aug. 21, 1609 ­ first demonstration of Galileo’s telescope, from the top of the tower of
St. Mark in Venice (arranged by Sarpi)
Aug. 24, 1609 ­ demonstration of the telescope to the Doge and the entire Venetian
Senate (also arranged by Sarpi)
1611 ­ A Polish visitor to Venice, by the name of Rey, writes in a letter, that the “advisor,
author, and director” of the Venetian telescope project had been Paolo Sarpi.
Actually, Galileo appears to have had a lot of trouble building the telescope. During July
and August of of 1609, Sarpi sent a number of inquiries to Galileo, asking him what was taking
so long, particularly given the fact that, for all practical purposes, he had been given
rudimentary blueprints for the device. On top of this, Galileo actually had a huge advantage,
in that the Italian glass­making industry, which supplied the material for his lenses, was the
most advanced in Europe.
Unlike the copier Galileo, an actual invention came from Kepler himself. Upon receiving a
model of the “Galileo telescope” in early 1610, Kepler immediately realized a fundamental
design flaw, and proceeded to actually invent his own original telescope, known as the Kepler
or “Astronomical” telescope, utilizing – for the first time – 2 convex lenses, rather than the
Dutch model of a concave lens and a convex lens. In 1611 Kepler published Dioptrice, an in
depth study of lenses and images, in which he described his new invention. Kepler’s telescope
was far superior and eventually replaced the Galileo telescope in use throughout Europe.
Marketing the Galileo Commodity
Before proceeding to how the myth of Galileo was promulgated throughout Europe, it is first
essential – if shocking to some – to grasp the reality that Galileo Galilei was not a scientist. He was a
commodity, one whom Sarpi invented and then marketed, in a manner that would have made the
slickest 1960's New York ad­man green with envy. This was truly one of the most outrageous con­jobs
in all of history.
In 1592 Galileo moved to Padua from Pisa, where he had been an undistinguished professor and
mathematician. Upon his arrival in Padua he was taken under the wing of a powerful group of
Venetian aristocrats, led by Giovanni Francesco Sagredo and Nicolo Contarini. Members of Paolo
Sarpi’s inner circle, these individuals introduced Galileo into the Morosini and Nave d’Oro ridotti. The
wealthy Sagredo became the personal patron of the young Pisan professor, inviting him to stay at his
palatial villa, built on top of Roman ruins on the banks of the Brenta canal. This villa, which was
notorious in its day as the scene of wild parties, became Galileo’s second home.
Sarpi deployed members of his clique to control and guide Galileo’s work, and in some cases
provide him with inventions or theories which would then be publicized under Galileo’s name. These
latter included the first modern thermometer (Sagredo's invention); Galileo’s “theory of tides”
(developed by de Dominis, and given to Galileo, it was egregiously wrong anyway); and much of his
reputed work on mechanics and weights (provided by Santorio Santorio and Filippo Salviati). The idea
was to build up the image of Galileo as the hero of the “New Science.”
When Sarpi’s agents were unable to provide Galileo with new discoveries which he could claim as
his own, they simply stole them from others, frequently attacking the original discoverer as a plagiarist
(a method to be employed a century later against Leibniz’s authorship of the calculus). The event