The origins of the telescope - DWC - KNAW

Ill. 1. Galileo’s inscription in Ernst Brinck’s ‘Album Amicorum’ (1614)
[Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague]
paved the way for other scientific instruments which also emerged in the
course of the seventeenth century, such as the air pump, the barometer, and
the microscope. The emergence of the telescope was an important episode in
the history of science and technology not only because it marks the invention
of a new device, or because it changed man’s image of the universe, but also
because it helped change the ways in which natural philosophy was practiced
and what counted as ‘science.’ It is for this reason that we considered it appropriate
to organize a conference at the Roosevelt Academy in Middelburg on 25
September 2008, exactly 400 years after the spectacle-maker Hans Lipperhey
of this same city received a letter of recommendation to the national government
in The Hague to demonstrate some ‘sights of glasses’ with which ‘one can
see all things very far as if they were close by.’ 3 The conference was organized
in cooperation with the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences in The Hague and Ghent University in Belgium. It was
supported by the Province of Zeeland and the city of Middelburg.
3 See the illustration of the minute of Lipperhey's letter of recommendation of 25 September 1608
in: Zuidervaart, ill. 1, elsewhere in this volume.
2
introduction