The principal documents from which the above facts touching Lippershey
have been extracted, are to be found in a memoir on the subject by
Olbers, printed in Schumacher’s _Astronomical Annual_ for 1843.
It was said in the time of Galileo that he had in his possession a
telescope by the aid of which he could see the birds flying at Fiesole
from the window of his palace in Florence. This story does not in the
least detract from the merit of the illustrious astronomer, who not only
constructed a telescope for himself, but was the first to direct it
heavenwards, and that too by purely theoretical researches; for in spite
of all the documents adduced above, there is little or no proof that he
had ever seen or heard of the Dutchman’s telescope. It is only right,
therefore, that the instrument constructed on this principle should be
called the Galilean telescope. He afterwards increased its power from
four to thirty times, beyond which he could not get with the means at
his command. With his imperfect instruments Galileo discovered the
satellites of Jupiter, the mountains of the moon, and the spots on the
sun, and earned for himself the name of Lynceus, who according to the
ancients was one of the Argonauts, possessed of the power of seeing
through a wall. Towards the end of his life, when the old man was blind,
and the Academy of the Lincei treated his hypotheses with disdain, he
would laugh sadly at the name bestowed on him, and the obstinate
Academy. Fig. 41 (see next page) shows the path of the rays in a
Galilean telescope. The object-glass _O_ is double convex, and the
eye-piece o bi-concave. The image is formed between these lenses, and
the eye appears to see it at that point. The States-General complained
of being obliged to shut one eye when looking through a telescope, but
in 1671 a good Capuchin monk, whose name was Cherubino, placed two
telescopes together, little thinking that the moderns would imitate him
in that very worldly instrument, the opera-glass.
[Illustration:
Fig. 41.—The Galilean Telescope.
]
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