The origins of the telescope - DWC - KNAW

of the telescope, and who even wonder why ‘the Lipperhey myth’ has so ‘stubbornly’
survived. 112
But who then was the mysterious ‘young man,’ who on 14 October 1608
showed a second crude telescope to the Middelburg magistrates? Could it be
any one else than Jansen? In my view, there is indeed a better candidate. When
we look closely at the evidence presented by De Waard in 1906, it becomes
clear that Jansen was (albeit scarcely) mentioned as a spectacle maker only
beginning in 1616. It is therefore tempting to assume that Jansen took up this
profession just because he had inherited the tools of the late spectacle maker
‘Lowys Lowyssen, geseyt Henricxen brilmakers,’ whose children had come under
Jansen’s guardianship in the previous year. As in these same years Jansen
was mainly working as a counterfeiter, producing large series of fake Spanish
coins, his optical workshop in fact could have functioned as a cover for these
highly illegal activities.
Thus, if Jansen did not work as a spectacle maker before 1616, which other
Middelburg spectacle maker did? Of course, the spectacle maker ‘Lowys
Lowyssen, geseyt Henricxen brilmakers.’ He is evidently a better candidate
for this unknown ‘young man,’ than the wrongly praised Jansen, whose only
proven achievement is the production of counterfeit coins.
112 Barlow Pepin, The Emergence of the Telescope (2004). See also De Rijk, ‘Een standbeeld voor
Zacharias Janssen’ (1975); idem, ‘Wie heeft de telescoop uitgevonden?’ (1985) and idem, ‘Op zoek
naar de uitvinder van de Hollandse kijker’ (2008).
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huib j. zuidervaart