The Telescope

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eye. It was the first extension of man’s senses and demonstrated that ordinary observers could see things that Aristotle had not dreamed of. It therefore helped shift authority in the observation of nature from men to instruments. In short, it was the prototype of modern scientific instruments. But was not the invention of scientists; rather, it was the product of craftsmen. For that reason, much of it’s origin is inaccessible to us since craftsmen were by large illiterate and therefore historically often invisible.
Although the magnifying and diminishing properties of the convex and concave transparent objects was known in Antiquity, lenses, as we know them, were introduced in the West at the end of the thirteenth century. Glass of reasonable quality had become relatively cheap and in the major glass-making centers of Venice and Florence techniques for grinding and polishing glass had reached a high state of development. Now one of the main problems faced by aging scholoars ...

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