The telescope and microscope / by Thomas Dick.

  • Thomas Dick
Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The telescope and microscope / by Thomas Dick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    workshop to see his experiments, which afforded amusement, and awakened curiosity. To this incident we may probably attribute the ex- pression of Huygens, an astronomer of the seven- teenth century, who described the telescope as a “ casual invention.” For some time the contrivance of the Middle- burgh optician remained unimproved, and was applied to no valuable purpose. At length, about the year 1609, two workmen of the same city, by giving to his discovery a new form, made all the honour of it their own. These men, whose names were Zachariah Jans, or Jansen, and Hans Lapprey, or Lippersheim, are said to have been spectacle makers. One of them placed the glasses in a tube, the inside of which he blackened, to prevent the glare, which would be occasioned by the reflection of light from a bright surface, and which would pro- duce indistinctness of vision. The other placed the glasses in tubes, sliding one within another, to make the instrument portable by diminish- ing its length. When Jansen had completed his telescope, he presented it to prince Maurice of Nassau. The United Provinces were then at war with France, and the prince, perceiving the
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