The origins of the telescope - DWC - KNAW

Ill. 11. The Jansen ‘microscope’ (or Snijder’s short tube), as exhibited in 1876 at the
South Kensington Exposition. From: De Clercq (2003).
Ill. 12. Left: The Jansen ‘microscope’ (or Snijder’s short tube), in its present state
of preservation (Collection Koninklijk Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen,
Zeeuws Museum, Middelburg). Right: Copy made in the 1890s by John Mayall.
(National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington, D.C., USA). Other copies
are in the British Museum, London and the Deutsches Museum, Munich.
But the most profound contribution to Lipperhey’s rehabilitation was made
in 1885 by the antiquarian Johannes Godefridus Frederiks. In the Middelburg
archives he had found the birth registration of Johannes Sachariassen, Jansen’s
son, whose testimony in 1655 had established his father’s fame as an optical
inventor. Now it became evident that Sachariassen had lied about his own age.
As he was born in 1611, rather than in 1602 as he had claimed, Sachariassen
could therefore not have made any contribution to the claimed invention of
the long tubes in 1618. This falsification made his whole testimony extremely
dubious and Frederiks was merciless in his final judgement about Jansen,
whose fame he labelled as a ‘scientific swindle’:
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huib j. zuidervaart