Collection:
Louwman Collection of Historic Telescopes
Accession #:
LC 20
Sources:
Cocquyt, Tiemen. "400 Years of Telescopes" booklet, Zeeuws Museum, 2008. Item 1.
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. 59.
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. 38.
Bolt & Korey, "The world's oldest telescopes," in THE ORIGINS OF THE TELESCOPE. (Amsterdam 2011). See p. 247.
Public Notes:
"Telescope with a short drawtube, made of fruit wood. The original lenses have not been preserved. Maximum length 31 cm, Ø 4 cm.
With its original leather casing. Unsigned. Presumably third quarter of the seventeenth century.
In view of the style of wood turning, which is also rather characteristic to the Dutch furniture of the seventeenth century, this instrument could have been manufactured in the Netherlands. In that country it was customary to store telescope lenses separately from the tubes, so this also could explain the loss of the lenses. A telescope slightly resembling this instrument (length 12-23 cm) was found in the shipwreck of the Swedish vessel ‘Kronan’, which was sunk in 1676 in the Baltic Sea, after a clash with the Danish-Dutch fleet" (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.
