BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gijs van Ginkel" data-source="post: 3207482" data-attributes="member: 82596">Binastro, post 23,I have read your post with great interest and I have not found the paper you are referring to. In the symposium book of an historic conference about the origins of the telescope, which took place in 2008, no reference is made of the invention of an Elisabethan telescope, which was kept secret for military reasons. An Elisabethan telesope is mentioned but it probably was based on the work by Digges and Bourne and their optical experiments may have led to the design and construction of telescope like devices.Already in ancient times the magnifying power of transparant crYstals was known and reading glasses were also known made from such crystals, but nothing hints at the invention of a telescope and certainly not from a binocular. The first solid evidence for the construction of binoculars (well documented sources) is the one performed by Hans Lipperhey in 1608 in Middelburg The Netherlands and he was paid a large amount of money for it. Rolf Willach showed in a very elegant way why Lipperhey could be so succesfull and why and how the news of this invention was spread so quickly through Europe. You can read all this information in "The Origins of the Telescope", Eds. Albert van Helden, Sven Dupree, Rob van Gent and Huib Zuidervaart, KNAW Press, Amsterdam, 2010, ISBN 978 90 6984 615 6 Gijs</blockquote>