The origins of the telescope - DWC - KNAW

Ill. 3. Note made in the meeting of the board of the province of Zeeland, on 14
October 1608, stating that an unnamed person [the clerck has not filled in his name]
also claimed to have ‘the art of making an instrument to see far away objects near by’.
[Zeeuws Archief, Middelburg].
engineer coming from Count Maurits’ army, who was able to reproduce
Lipperhey’s instrument. For, as Jeannin stated in his letter to the French king:
‘there is no great difficulty in imitating that first invention.’ 22
The rapid dissemination of the instrument
Following the September presentation in The Hague, the news about the telescope
spread over Europe like wildfire. The newsletter cited above was composed
in October 1608 (probably in The Hague) and had arrived in Paris by
mid-November, where it was read by the chronicler Pierre de l’Estoile, who
sent it to a publisher to be printed. The Paris-issue was reprinted in Lyon in
the same month, and that very month a copy had even reached Paolo Sarpi,
Galileo’s close friend, in Venice. 23
Within half a year of the demonstration of the telescope in The Hague,
copies of the actual instrument were in the hands of several European rulers
and magistrates. Probably in February 1609 at least two telescopes were sent
from The Hague to the French court, 24 and the same (or the next) month at
least two instruments were assembled in Brussels. These clones of the original
instrument had been made at the request of the Marquis de Spinola, who immediately
after his return in Brussels had reported about the telescope to his
superior, Archduke Albertus of Austria, the consort of the Infanta Isabella,
daughter of the late Spanish king Philip II. It was probably one of these telescopes,
having tubes made by the silversmith Robert Staes, which is depicted
22 Van Helden, Invention (1977), 43: ‘aussi n’y a-il pas grande difficulté imiter cette premiere invention.’
23 Cf. Pantin, ‘La lunette astronomique’ (1995), 162; Sluiter, ‘The Telescope before Galileo’ (1997).
24 The French ambassador in The Hague, Pierre Jeannin, suggested in his letters that two of the
Lipperhey telescopes ordered by the States General were actually meant as a gift for the French king.
Cf. Van Helden, Invention (1977), 43.
16
huib j. zuidervaart