Collection:
Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes
Accession #:
LC 19
Sources:
Project investigation.
Cocquyt, Tiemen. "400 Years of Telescopes" booklet, Zeeuws Museum, 2008. Item 3.
Louwman, P.J.K., and Zuidervaart, H.J., "A Certain Instrument to See Far: Four Centuries of Styling the Telescope Illustrated by a Selection of Treasures from the Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes". Wassenaar, 2009. p. 61.
Louwman, P.J.K., and Zuidervaart, H.J., "A Certain Instrument for Seeing Far: Four Centuries of Styling the Telescope Illustrated by a Selection of Treasures from the Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes". Wassenaar, 2013. p. 37. #19
Bolt, M. and Korey, M. "The world's oldest telescopes." THE ORIGINS OF THE TELESCOPE. Eds. Albert Van Helden, Sven Dupré, Rob van Gent, and Huib Zuidervaart. Amsterdam: Knaw Press. 2010. p. 242.
Public Notes:
"Italian telescope with tubes made of pasteboard. Main tube covered
with gold-tooled brown leather. Three drawtubes covered with marbled
paper. End pieces and support rings made of ivory. Length 20-48 cm,
Ø 3 cm. Presumably about 1675.
The gold embossing of this telescope is characteristic of Italian telescopes. A similar instrument is in the collection of the Luxottica Museum in Agordo in Northern Italy (as cited in Louwman and Zuidervaart, 2009: Del Vecchio (1955) 52-53). The turned ivory end pieces of this telescope have a shape identical to those of the telescopes depicted on the shrine containing Galileo’s famous objective lens with which he observed the heavens in the years 1609-1610. This frame was made in 1677 by Vittorio Crosten (presently in the Museo Galileo in Florence)" (Louwman and Zuidervaart, 2013).
Dioptrice is made possible by the generous
support of the National Science Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Program in the History and
Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame, and the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum.
