The origins of the telescope - DWC - KNAW

Guardian and El Mundo of Madrid, was broadcast on British television, and was
disseminated on a number of websites in various languages, including Spanish
and Catalan. 3 The prominence and rapid dissemination and favourable reception
through modern media of Pelling’s rehash of a claim first published by
Sirtori in 1618, shows that, to this day, national and regional pride have been
important factors in the various answers to the simple question ‘who invented
this instrument’? As I will show in this paper ‘cultural nationalism,’ has indeed
played a crucial role in the debate about the invention of the telescope in the past
400 years, together with another well-known phenomenon in historical writing,
the so-called ‘historical construct.’ 4
The first historical construct concerns the ‘invention’ itself, because what
happened in 1608 was in fact not an invention at all, but merely a recognition
of the great potential of a device, which must have been around for some decades,
as a kind of toy or as a device whose purpose was to correct or improve
vision. Indications of the awareness of the magnifying power of a combination
of two lenses, long before the year 1608, are indeed abundant in the contemporary
literature. For instance, in 1538 the Italian scholar Girolamo Fracastoro
(c. 1478-1553) wrote: ‘If someone looks through two eye-glasses, of which one
is placed above the other, he shall see everything larger and more closely.’ 5 Or to
quote Albert Van Helden in 1977: ‘The telescope was not invented ex nihilo.’ 6
After seeing or hearing of Lipperhey’s telescope, many scholars had a kind of déjà
vu-feeling. Girolamo Sirtori, who in 1612, only four years after the emergence
of the instrument, composed his well-known Telescopium, captured this feeling
in the following phrase:
It appeared that this conception was in the minds of many men, so that once they
heard about it, any ingenious person began trying to make one, without [the help of]
a model. 7
Then, why did we bother to celebrate in 2008 the 400-year anniversary
of the telescope? The answer to this question was already stated in 1645 by
3 For instance: ‘New focus shows Spaniard, not Dutchman, invented telescope,’ The Guardian
(Monday 15 September 2008).
4 See about the phrase ‘cultural nationalism’: Bank, Roemrijk vaderland (1990); Van Berkel,
‘Natuurwetenschap en cultureel nationalisme in negentiende-eeuws Nederland’ (1991).
5 v Fracastoro, Homocentrica (1538), 18 , cited from the English translation by Van Helden, Invention
(1977), 28.
6 Van Helden, Invention (1977), 24.
7 Sirtori, Telescopium, cited from the English translation by Van Helden, Invention (1977), 50.
Although the book was published in 1618, the text was written in 1612. Cf. De Waard, Uitvinding
(1906), 192.
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huib j. zuidervaart