Complete Inventions November 3, 2009

The Galilean Telescope and Its Rivals

Abstract: In this lecture I examine the delay between the moment when news of the Dutch telescope reached Venice, in November 1608, and Galileo Galilei’s own professed acquaintance with such rumors, or with the device itself, in the early summer of 1609.

In trying to account for his uncharacteristic tardiness, I focus on alternative conjectures and practices concerning telescopic vision, and I also attempt to show what differences in astronomical discovery might have resulted from this delay.

Eileen Reeves is professor of Comparative Literature and an associate member of the Program in the History of Science at Princeton University. Her area of specialization is early modern scientific literature. She published Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo in 1997, and Galileo’s Glassworks: The Telescope and the Mirror in 2007. On Sunspots, co-written with Albert van Helden, will appear in 2010.