The Digges Telescope

[Mike]

Well the piece on the BBC programme cocnerning the Digges telescope was far too short in my opinion. If it turns out this scope was made before 1608 when the first 'spyglasses' started to appear, then it will be truly historical and will mean the history books will have to be re-written.

Most people think the official inventor of the telesopce was Galileo. In fact, on October 2nd 1608 a spectacle maker named Hanz Lipperhey, from Middelburg, in the Flemish province of Zeeland, applied for a patent on a "certain instrument for seeing far". Galileo was the first to use the device for Astronomical observations.

But, in the 1570's, Thomas Digges wrote to his father, Leonard Digges, stating "Hath by proportionall Glasses duely situate in convenient angles, not onely discovered things farre off, read letters, numbred peeces of money with the very coyne and superscription thereof, cast by some of his freends of purpose uppon Downes in open fields, but also seven myles of declared wat hath beene doon at that instante in private places".

Also, William Bourne wrote in his Inventions or Devices of 1578, "For to see any small thing a great distance from you, it requireth the ayde of two glasses, and one glasse must be made of purpose, and it may be made in such sort, that you may see a small thing a great distance of, as this, to reade a letter that is set upon neare a quarter of a myle from you, and also to see a man four or five miles from you, or to view a Towne or Castell, or to see any window such like six or seaven myles from you".

This showed that in the 1570's telescope's were being made, or at least the two lenses were held in such a fashion as to constitute an open tubed telescope.

In Richard Panek's history of the telescope he says that such devices didn't yet exist and that it was mere theory. If the Digges telescope were known to have been made then he was wrong and the dutchman wasn't the inventor of the scope after all, but it was a British invention.

The BBC History website doesn't pay much attention to this which is surprising as it would be very significent if it were the case, especially for historians.

[Ian]

I've not seen it yet, but this seems typical of British innovation. We could do with learning how to shout about our successes. In a similar vein, there is an interesting part of an Jeremy Clarkson program where he walks around Washington DC shouting out all the things we invented the Americans claim as their own. Computers anyone? Supersonic aircraft? poptarts? (actually I'm not too sure about them)

[Greg]

I can do an impression of Poptarts.

"Ouch, hah, hah, ho... hot... t, ouch, ouch, tooo, hah,haaah, hot, fu..., fu..., fun - I don't think so."

[Mike]

You can also use them as a nasty weapon if you override the thermal cutout switch on the toaster !

[Ian]

I see they have a picture of the Digges Telescope here http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/tudors_stuarts/tudors_stuarts_progs_01.shtml

and then they give no details as to it's significance. I wonder if we're missing something....