A Brill Calendar: August 25

Few historical premises are more readily believed than the one that news travelled slowly before the advent of the electrical telegraph.

This notion is easily refuted. The invention of the telescope, early in the 17th century is an example of the fact that important news for statesmen and scholars could reach inquisitive and important people all over Europe within less than twelve months.

Just before a Twelve Years Truce with Spain (1609 – 1621), politicians and diplomats around Prince Maurice of Nassau were presented with a brand-new invention, mentioned in writing September 25 1608: a straight-forward combination of a convex optical objective lens with a concave eyeglass.

The first portrait to show eyeglasses was painted in 1325. That optical tool compensated farsightedness; the first depiction of nearsightedness is from 1517. Their combination in one optical device was demonstrated at The Hague by one Sacharias Jansen and allowed the Prince to tell the time from the Delft City clock, many miles distant. The invention was so simple, that a clever child playing with different types of lenses could have made the discovery; no wonder, that other names - like Jacob Metius of Alkmaar and Hans Lipperhey of Middelburg - were also mentioned as ‘one and onlie begetter’ of the telescope.

Within months, inspection copies were presented to the French Court; and on August 25 1609 Galileo Galilei (Pisa, February 15 1562 – Arcetri, January 8 1642) presented the Venetian Senate with its own specimen; in the mean-time already significantly improved. It is seldom indeed, that an instrument and its twin-sister, born slightly later – the microscope – have changed the face of the earth and of scholarship with such extra-ordinary speed and elegance.