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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    advantage which he might obtain in the field over the enemy by means of this gift, desired that its invention should be kept a profound secret. But the time had now arrived when the telescope was to be employed for nobler purposes than those of war, and, as the medium of most astonishing discoveries, to justify what soon afterwards was said of it, that the wit and industry of man had produced nothing so worthy of his faculties.* Before the time of Galileo, who was born at Pisa, in 1564, the observations which had been made in the heavens were few and imperfect. He has been frequently supposed to be the inventor of the telescope, because he was the first who successfully applied it to astronomy. In the following passage, translated from a small work, Avritten in Latin, which he published in 1610, under the title of “ Sidereus Nuncius,” he confutes this notion, and shows what prompted his first efforts to make such an instrument. “ Nearly ten months ago, it Avas reported that a certain Dutchman had made a perspective, through Avhich many distant objects appeared as distinct as if they Avere near. Several expe- * Huygens.
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