How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson · 28 Sep 2014 · 243pp · 65,374 words
of the microscope, a cluster of Dutch lensmakers, including Zacharias Janssen, more or less simultaneously invented the telescope. (Legend has it that one of them, Hans Lippershey, stumbled upon the idea while watching his children playing with his lenses.) Lippershey was the first to apply for a patent, describing a device “for
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telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory, the most powerful optical telescopes on earth. The Keck telescopes would seem to be a direct descendant of Hans Lippershey’s creation, only they do not rely on lenses to do their magic. To capture light from distant corners of the universe, you would need
Big Bang
by Simon Singh · 1 Jan 2004 · 492pp · 149,259 words
to explore the heavens, he probably assumed that Galileo had invented the telescope. Indeed, many people today make the same assumption. In fact, it was Hans Lippershey, a Flemish spectacle-maker, who patented the telescope in October 1608. Within a few months of Lippershey’s breakthrough, Galileo noted that ‘a rumour came
Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation
by Steven Johnson · 5 Oct 2010 · 298pp · 81,200 words
exist on who invented the compound microscope, most historians credit either the Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Janssen and his son Hans, or the German optician Hans Lippershey. In 1609 Galileo re-formed Janssen’s original design into a more efficient machine. In the 1670s, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek first applied the microscope to
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
by David Wootton · 7 Dec 2015 · 1,197pp · 304,245 words
of Galileo’s discoveries is, it seems, straightforward. In 1608 the telescope was invented in the Netherlands. It was a chance discovery made, perhaps, by Hans Lippershey, a spectacle maker (two other spectacle makers disputed Lippeshey’s priority claim). In 1609 Galileo, who had never seen a telescope, worked out how to
Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
by Brett King · 5 May 2016 · 385pp · 111,113 words
1590s at the height of the Dutch empire. The first person to apply for a patent for a telescope was a Dutch spectacle maker named Hans Lippershey. In 1608, Lippershey laid claim to inventing a device that increased magnification by three times. His telescope had a concave eyepiece aligned with a convex
Civilization: The West and the Rest
by Niall Ferguson · 28 Feb 2011 · 790pp · 150,875 words
magnetic properties of the earth and electricity 1604 Galileo discovers that a free-falling body increases its distance as the square of the time 1608 Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Jansen independently invent the telescope 1609 1609 Galileo conducts the first telescopic observations of the night sky 1610 Galileo discovers four of Jupiter
What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
by Marcus Du Sautoy · 18 May 2016
, for years Galileo himself seemed to get the credit for the invention of the telescope, but that accolade should go to the Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey, who filed a patent for an instrument ‘for seeing things far away as if they were nearby’. The Dutch instrument was able to magnify things
Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines
by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby · 23 May 2016 · 347pp · 97,721 words
to them. In the meantime, however, there are plenty of partnerships in which humans can thrive. 3 Don’t Automate, Augment Legend has it that Hans Lippershey, a German eyeglass maker plying his trade in 1608 in the town of Middelburg, Netherlands, got his big idea when he glanced over at two
The Fabric of the Cosmos
by Brian Greene · 1 Jan 2003 · 695pp · 219,110 words
way we examine the cosmos. There was a time when all we could do was raise our eyes and gaze skyward. In the seventeenth century, Hans Lippershey and Galileo Galilei changed that; with the aid of the telescope, the grand vista of the cosmos came within humanity’s purview. But in time
Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11
by James Donovan · 12 Mar 2019
moon was like. Galileo Galilei, the early-seventeenth-century Italian polymath, was not the inventor of the telescope—at least one man, a Dutchman named Hans Lippershey, had applied for a patent for one in 1608. But the more powerful telescope Galileo constructed the next year was the first to be aimed
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
by Dava Sobel · 25 May 2009 · 363pp · 108,670 words
Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
by Rebecca Boyle · 16 Jan 2024 · 354pp · 109,574 words