.

This earliest known

picture of spectacles in use
was painted by a Tuscany
monk in 1352. Compound
use of lenses came some
250 years later with the
telescope and first
compound microscopes.

A design by Galileo for

an escapement and
pendulum drawn by is
pupil Vincenzio Viviani.
Pendulum clocks were to
be much more precise than
earlier weight- or springdriven clocks.

)
In the last months of his life, Galileo worked on the
application of the principle of the pendulum to the
regulation of clocks. A pendulum clock was
invented in Holland (; page 74) not long after, in
1656 or 1657. It was designed by Christiaan
Huygens (1629-1695), a Dutch physicist who hoped
that this more reliable timekeeper would be
invaluable at sea. As it turned out, his clocks were
too badly shaken about on shipboard to work
properly. On land, however, they soon became the
norm; older clocks were adjusted to take the
pendulum and the new type was soon to be found
in every solid middle-class household.

Surveying and triangulation

On land, too, new mathematical technologies were
making their presence felt. Cannon first appeared
early in the 14th century in Europe, and by 1500 had
evolved to become the major weapon of war. To
site, lay, and aim guns required elementary
mathematics. To counter artillery, a new style of
fortification was developed, in which a series of
bastions, like raised gun emplacements, were
connected by "curtain" walls. These were spaced
and designed so as to allow the widest possible
range of fire with the least exposure to the enemy's
assault. As land use in the 16th century became
more bound to the cash requirements of
landowners, exact and detailed surveys of estates
became a pressing need. New mathematical
techniques were invented, such as triangulation, to
make maps and estate plans more precise. These
inspired a steady flow of booklets on surveying,
cartography and chart-making. Mathematics was
also important in gauging (as in Kepler's book on
calculating the content of wine and beer barrels).

Lenses, spectacles and the telescope

The first new scientific instrument was the

telescope. Yet in its origins it seems to have been
an accidental invention. Spectacles were first used

in Tuscany, probably by about 1300. By 1500,

although still regarded as suitable only for elderly
scholars, spectacles were quite common, and
there were professional lens-grinders and
spectacle-makers.
Three rival claimants for the honor of first
combining lenses to create a telescope, all in the
Low Countries, applied forpatents in 1608. The
Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey, who died
in 1619, is usually allowed to have the best claim.
There are tantalizing references to earlier
instruments giving optical magnification, but there
seems to be no reason to believe that anyone
actually constructed a telescope before 1608.
Galileo had proffered his telescope to Venice for
use at sea; the captain could identify hostile ships
and check their size and armament when they were
scarcely visible to the unaided eye. Telescopes did
become essential information-gathering devices at
sea, and in land warfare, too, by the 18th century
(; page 75). They were also useful in survey work,
through the application of telescopic sights to
theodolites and other instruments (; page 115).
Although Johannes Kepler had never made a
telescope for himself, he did suggest in his book
"Dioptrice" of
that two convex lenses would
be better than Gslileo's type, with its concave
eyepiece. Only when this was taken up were the
astronomers of the 1640s and 1650s able to add to
what Galileo had found. Huygens discovered
Saturn's ring and its satellite Titan, while others
saw the belts on the planet Jupiter.

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