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Author Bucciantini, Massimo

Title Galileo's telescope : a European story / Massimo Bucciantini, Michele Camerota, Franco Giudice ; translation by Catherine Bolton
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2015

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Prologue -- From the Low Countries -- The Venetian archipelago -- Breaking news : lenses and envelopes -- In a flash -- Peregrinations -- The battle of Prague -- Across the English Channel : poets, philosophers, and astronomers -- Setting out to conquer France -- Milan : at the court of "King" Federico -- The dark skies of Florence -- Roman mission -- In motion : Portugal, India, China -- Epilogue
Summary "Between 1608 and 1610 the canopy of the night sky changed forever, ripped open by an object created almost by accident: a cylinder with lenses at both ends. Galileo's Telescope tells the story of how an ingenious optical device evolved from a toy-like curiosity into a precision scientific instrument, all in a few years. In transcending the limits of human vision, the telescope transformed humanity's view of itself and knowledge of the cosmos. Galileo plays a leading--but by no means solo--part in this riveting tale. He shares the stage with mathematicians, astronomers, and theologians from Paolo Sarpi to Johannes Kepler and Cardinal Bellarmine, sovereigns such as Rudolph II and James I, as well as craftsmen, courtiers, poets, and painters. Starting in the Netherlands, where a spectacle-maker created a spyglass with the modest magnifying power of three, the telescope spread like technological wildfire to Venice, Rome, Prague, Paris, London, and ultimately India and China. Galileo's celestial discoveries--hundreds of stars previously invisible to the naked eye, lunar mountains, and moons orbiting Jupiter--were announced to the world in his revolutionary treatise Sidereus Nuncius. Combining science, politics, religion, and the arts, Galileo's Telescope rewrites the early history of a world-shattering innovation whose visual power ultimately came to embody meanings far beyond the science of the stars."--Jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Translated from the Italian
Print version record
Subject Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642.
SUBJECT Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642 fast
Galilei, Galileo 1564-1642 gnd
Subject Telescopes -- Europe -- History -- 17th century
Astronomical instruments -- Europe -- History -- 17th century
Astronomy -- History -- 17th century
NATURE -- Sky Observation.
SCIENCE -- History.
Astronomical instruments
Astronomy
Telescopes
Fernrohr
Telescopen.
Instrumenten.
Astronomi -- historia.
Teleskop -- historia.
Astronomiska instrument -- historia.
Europe
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
Author Camerota, Michele
Giudice, Franco
LC no. 2014033443
ISBN 9780674425446
0674425448
Other Titles Telescopio di Galileo. English