Scientific Innovations and the Dutch Telescope
The Low Countries were the site of many technological developments during the Scientific Revolution. One of these technological fields of advancement was lens-making and optics. Anton von Leeuwenhoeck, for example, innovated in the development of the microscope in ways which revealed aspects about the human body which had never been observed before (Wiesner-Hanks 296). Another Dutch advancement in optics regards the telescope. The development of this “invention” sheds an interesting light on how invention, innovation, and scientific advancement are conceptualized historically.
The development of the earliest telescopes is the source of some debate among historians, as numerous individuals claimed to be the inventors of the telescope. The Low Countries and Italy are both potential locations for its invention, and numerous individuals claimed to have conceived of the invention or pursued patents. Hans Lippershey first applied for a patent for the telescope in the Netherlands in 1608, but the patent was denied as the patent office had identified others capable of making similar devices (van Helden 20-21). Conceptually, the telescope appeared it Italy in the writings of Giovanni Battista della Porta, who claimed to have invented the device first after hearing of Galileo’s successes with his telescope (Freedberg 101). Galileo acknowledged the primacy of an unnamed Dutch inventor in developing a telescope, but also declared he had invented the telescope, contrasting his invention as an enlightened development against a Dutch accident while making glasses (Rosen 305-306).
Various historians have approached this situation differently. Albert van Helden, for example, states that the development of the telescope marks a gradual innovation in Dutch lens-making and optics: “the telescope was not invented so to speak, ex nihilo” (van Helden 24). Other historians, such as Engel Sluiter, identify Lippershey as the inventor because he applied for the first patent, and marks the invention as a discrete event after which the telescope diffused throughout Europe (Sluiter 228). The differences in these interpretations represent two different ways to look at the history of scientific developments. On one hand, scientific developments during this period often emerged accidentally and slowly, subverting the idea of a sole inventor, but on the other hand, once significant discoveries or innovations had been made, the new technology quickly spread across Europe and was improved upon even further. The example of the telescope still connects the Netherlands with the wider world of scientific development in the early modern period.