Let’s go to the Netherlands! There is something remarkable about the Dutch when it comes to glass lenses and scientific tools. Maybe Hans Lippershay invented the telescope. Maybe it was some kids in his town. Or maybe it was one of two other guys who seem to have come up with the idea at the same time and place.
And as far as microscopes go, a dutch man named Antonie von Leeuwenhoek got obsessed with microscopes. He is remembered as the father of microbiology.
Transcript of Telescope segment. All writing by Mick Sullivan. Use Wisely.
When the tomb of King Tutankhamen was first opened in 1923, it was filled with the treasure you might expect to find alongside the mummy of a famous Egyptian Pharoah: Food, jewels, silver, and yes, gold. But one of the most important things carefully placed in the tomb for ol’ Tut to carry into the afterlife was anything but precious – at least by our standards today. A piece of glass. However, back when he was in his pre-mummified state, a piece of glass would have been extremely rare and treasured. Yep, it was a little piece of glass that someone had carved into a scarab – a beetle – and placed on a big fancy necklace which covered much of King Tut’s chest.
What, you may wonder, was so exceptional about this cloudy piece of glass that could fit in your palm? Well, humans haven’t been making glass forever. At some point they had to learn about glass in the first place. And that knowledge may have come from the Libyan desert in the northern part of the African Continent. If you don’t know, sand is the main ingredient in glass, or more accurately the silica in sand. Incredible heat followed by quick cooling temperature can turn sand to a cloudy glass chunks. Egyptians valued this material greatly – alongside gold and silver.
Long, long before Tut’s beetle jewelry, it’s likely that a meteor crashed into the Libyan desert. The explosion got hot enough to turn some of that desert’s sand into glass. This is likely the glass used to make the blingy buggy necklace for King Tut’s eternal journey. But it was also around this time that people in the area started to make their own glass. And over the years, we’ve learned how adding things, or refining the process can leave us with clearer and clearer glass. Today, glass is everywhere. Look around. I’d bet you are within reach of glass right now, and you’re not even thinking about it.
Sure, glass is good for holding stuff, and it makes great windows, computer screens, and drinking vessels. But it’s most important contribution might be how it changed the way we see the world. Literally. Lenses have done a lot for humankind. Maybe glass lenses help you see and read and all that stuff. Yes, eyeglass lenses are crucial for many – and oh!, how the world must have changed for the better when people who needed them could finally get them – in the past or now. But for each and every one of us, glass has helped us to understand both what is happening beyond our own planet, as well as the unseen things in the world around us.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the telescope was invented – as with many developments, there’s plenty of disagreement. Some people believe when an idea’s time is right for the world, it can show up in many places and minds at the same time. Humanity just seems ready for it. Perhaps the idea of a telescope was ripe for happening because people developed them independently. And sometimes when things like this happen, the people live in the same country. And the same city. If we’re talking about big moments in telescoping history, it’s hard not to focus on The Netherlands in the year 1608
Hans Lippershay was a lens-maker in the Dutch town of Middleburg. This job was in-demand because, in the late 1500s lenses for eyeglasses were needed by many. The century before, Johan Gutenberg’s printing press changed the world. It meant books could be made more easily and so they were suddenly available to many. More books meant the number of people who could read exploded soon after. More books means more readers; more readers means more glasses for people who need them to get that reading done. Today it is estimated the over 62% of adults use glasses to read. Things probably weren’t much different back then. So, many of these new readers of the 1500s looked to lens makers like Lippershay and a few other expert lens makers in his town.
Hans was very good at his craft, grinding lenses to the concave and convex shapes required to properly enhance one’s vision. Of course, as you work in such a craft, you make some mistakes. You’re bound to mess up a lens now and then. And there’s a legend about what might have happened to a few of the glass cast-offs that he had discarded. Some curious and clever neighborhood kids found some of his old lenses and decided to entertain themselves. According to the story often told, but difficult to prove, some kids were holding up two of his lenses in line with one another, but with some space between them. Looking through the closest lens, they joyfully discovered that distant objects became larger and easier to see. Church Steeples in the distance, birds in the sky, and trees on hilltops suddenly were clear to their eye.
Lippershay thought it was as cool as the kids did and he started to tinker with a design, eventually putting a lens at two ends of a tube. Whether it was the act of kids, or his own bright idea matters not. He came up with something new. What we would call a telescope, he simply called a “looker” which is an accurate, if unimaginative description. In 1608, he began the process to earn a patent from the Dutch Government, naming himself the inventor of the looker. Despite being the first person to file for a patent on this subject, the Government said no. They said his invention was too easy to reproduce – it was great, but it was a simple idea that anyone could make.
“What? This invention is my own and it is revolutionary.”
“Mr. Lippershey, that may be…”
Knock knock.
“Come in”
“Ah hello, my name is Zacharias Janssen and I’d like a patent for my invention. It’s a tube with two lenses and it makes far things easier to see.”
“Janssen, what are you doing here? Stealing my idea?”
“Oh, you made one too? It’s really great isn’t it. Something’s far away I put it up to my eye and boom! I can see it. I’m thinking about calling it the lookybiggertube.”
“what a silly name”
What do you call yours?
“A looker”
Hmm…
Knock Knock.
And Who are you?
“I’m Jacob Metius, and I would like to get a patent for my new inventi…oh, you guys made one of these magnifying tubes too? I see. Well, guess I shoulda seen that one comin! Eh? Eh? Eh….”
None of these lens and looker makers would get a patent. While it didn’t playout quite as quickly or humorously as this in real life, The Government was kinda right – it was a simple idea that anyone could stumble on, heck, if anyone could claim to be the first with the idea, it could’ve been the bored kids! In reality three Dutch dudes (or two dutch dudes and a German, as Hans was actually German by birth) came up with essentially the same thing in a very small span of time. But so as not to leave Hans emptyhanded and out in the cold, they did make him an offer. He was the first to ask after all, so the government placed an order with him for lookers and some binocular-like versions.
Word of a good idea travels fast, even in the 1600s. One year later, in 1609, a man in Italy heard about the new tool and it filled his brain with ideas. This man was Gallileo (gallileo, gallileo) Gallileo Gallili. And he decided to make his own. The Dutch lookingglass, as it became known for a while, could magnify things by a factor of 3, making them 3 times as large as they appear to the naked eye. And it was considered useful for looking at things on land – like military matters – spying on troops. Stuff like that. But Gallileo’s designs were more powerful. An early version made things 8 times larger, and he later developed one that made things 30 times larger. Perhaps he ran tests by looking outside, pointing his tool at hilltops.
“I see a little silhouetta of a man, Saramouche!”
And then to the heavens.
“Magnificooooo!”
With his powerful telescope pointed to the heavens, Galileo observed things that were not in line with the thinking of the day. Many believed the theory that the earth was the center of the universe. Not so, Galileo could expertly say – the planets revolve around the sun, thanks to his lookeybiggertube. This non –earth-centric belief landed him in hot water – and he was forced to appear before the inquisition in Rome.
Mama Mia, let me go!
No No No No No
They did not like his discoveries. Despite being scientifically valid and true, people in power found them too challenging at the time. So, actually, they put him on house arrest. But he could still make observations and write. Which he did. We all know he was right now and they were wrong.
By the way, in 1611 a poet named Giovanni Demisiani was attending a ceremony to welcome Galileo into a scientific society known as the Accademia dei Lincei. It was at this event that he first used the word telescope to describe Galileo’s very own groundbreaking scientific tool. In greek, tele means far, and skopein means to see.
In the end, Lippershay’s glass contraption lead to a greater understanding of the universe. Not bad for a guy making glasses. Who knows what you can come up with!
Microscope and Leeuwenhoek text (not 100% identical to audio – but pretty darn close!)
In October of 1654, the town of Delft, in the Netherlands, was rocked to its core in an event known as Der Delftse Donderslag, or the Delft Thunderclap. The Netherlands had been at war with Spain for decades, so many places kept lots of barrels of gunpowder in safe places – safe from capture perhaps, but still susceptible to errant sparks. Delft kept their 30-40,000 tons of highly explosive gunpowder in an old convent. And on October 12, a spark or flame found its way inside. The explosion that followed was so powerful that it shook walls miles away. Hundreds of buildings were toppled, a smoldering crater was left where the gunpowder was once stored and thousands of pounds of shattered glass littered the street. The city was devastated.
A young man named Antonie van Leeuweehoek had just returned to Delft a few months prior. He had been born here and left town to apprentice a textile merchant, but had recently returned, married his wife, and started a textile business of his own. The devasted town rebuilt, but it slowly happened, and perhaps the vast amounts of broken glass scattered all around made an impression on the young man. He was certainly no stranger to the properties of glass. The Netherlands was filled with scientists and lens makers. In the textile business, a magnifying lens was a necessary new tool. Hold one up to your eye and you can see how many threads make a piece of fabric. More threads – more expensive. If you’re gonna sell fabric, you’re gonna need to count threads.
Leeuwenhoek’s parents were not wealthy. His father was a basket maker and his mother came from a family filled with brewers. They hoped he’d be a lawyer. But he never had much schooling. The education he did have certainly wasn’t the type of schooling he’d need to be a scientist. As a grown up, textiles were his business but they weren’t his passion. Science was. So he had to chart his own path.
Before long, he landed a few jobs working for the city. In one position he was responsible for keeping the city government building running. He made sure it was open and ready for council meetings, that Lanterns were lit, coal was burning, and it was nice and tidy. There were some perks to this job. For one he got to keep any leftover coal for himself. But more importantly, it wasn’t very demanding on his time and it gave him some freedom with his days. And that free time gave him time for microscopes – his true passion.
Leeuwenhoek did not invent the microscope. That’s kind of an often told but not true fact. There were already microscopes. In fact, he was inspired by a book called micrographia, which was filled with drawings of microscopic observations by an English scientist named Robert Hooke. Hooke did not have a very powerful microscope, but he did first use the word cell to describe something small. Don’t be impressed: Mr. Hooke never saw an actual teeny-tiny cell – you know, the microscopic building block of life. He just used the word to describe the holes in a piece of cork. Nevertheless, Antonie von Leeuwenhoek was inspired by Hooke, and he would go much farther in his studies. As a result, Antonie von Leeuwenhoek is rightfully remembered today as the father of microbiology: The pioneer of protozoa, the master of molecules, the titan of teeny-tiny things. Which is pretty awesome for a dude who was not a trained scientist.
Leeuwenheok was very curious. He wanted to know about what was a part of our life but that we could not see. He wondered about why the nearby lake was crystal clear in the winter and cloudy with green in the summer. He wanted to know what made up a drop of blood. He wanted to know where animals came from. Many intelligent people at the time thought things like mussels just showed up from the sand, or that unpopular little creatures like fleas, maggots, or weevils just popped up out of no where – like poof I’m a gross bug! More like poof we’re an infestation of gross bugs!
But Leeuwenhoek’s research changed this thinking. It wasn’t easy because he had no training, and he only spoke his native Dutch language, and perhaps a bit of English. We’re not too sure. The fact that he could not speak the languages of most scientists in the world meant he was largely alone. He was dependent on himself. But maybe that helped him. He was aware of his lack of formal training so he was very careful, deliberate, and open as he studied the tiny world on the other side of his microscope lens.
Or should I say lenses...Over his lifetime this guy made over 500 microscopes. And he ground each and every one of those lenses himself. That seems like a lot… because it is a lot. But if you saw one of his microscopes you might not even recognize it. No one would blame you if you thought it was a bottle opener or some kind of gruesome brass mousetrap. His design was definitely not a tube with two lenses. In fact, on a Leeuwenhoek scope there is but only one lens. One teeny tiny lens that he’d practically have to stick his eyeball on to see. But when he jammed it up to his eye what he did see was remarkably clear and magnified – much more so than any other microscope anyone had already seen.
And Antonie was curious about anything and everything. That might be part of what helped him learn so much. If he could fit it under the microscope lens, he was gonna have a look at it. He looked at everything. I mean everything. Ev-ree–tha-hing. We’ll leave it at that.
Imagine his surprise, and the surprise of everyone around him when he put a clear drop of water under the lens. Water – pure, clean, nothing could be in there, right? That’s what everyone thought. Where they right? They were worse than right. They were wrong. When magnified by 230x in the little brass tool, it was clear there was a world of little things moving around in that little drop. It was earthshaking.
Now, this! THIS discovery is a real Delftse Donderslag, if you catch my drift!
When he looked at the green algae from the lake in the summer, he saw beautiful swirling cones made of hairlike fibers. When he looked at the gunk scraped from his teeth, his wife’s teeth, his neighbor’s teeth, he saw the bacteria. While describing it in a letter, he poetically called this stuff “a little white matter, which is as thick as if ’twere batter.” Don’t forget to brush your teeth, people. Gross tooth gunk aside, Leeuwenhoek was the first person on earth, it seems, to see bacteria. Now we know bacteria is here, it’s there, it’s everywhere (don’t forget to wash your hands while you’re at it!), but this is a major breakthrough, a real donderslag of information.
Of course, when a new discovery of this microscopic magnitude is made, the new discoveries need names. Antonie called the bacteria, the protozoa, and the other invisibly small life a newly invented moniker. He dubbed them animalcules. He was also able to understand the lifecycle of mysterious mollusks, pesky fleas, and the enemy of farmers everywhere – weevils. He saw plant tissues, the intricacies and amazing structure of bug parts, and even glimpsed the blood cells that keep our bodies working.
For decades he microscopically examined everything from coffee beans to his own snot, and though he made discoveries, many were resistant to what he was saying. First of all, no one else had ever seen some of these things. Second, he was an amateur whose formal profession was selling drapes and other fabrics. He never wrote a book. Maybe because he was critical of his own drawing and knew that his work needed to be drawn for people to see. He also never published a scientific paper – mostly because could only speak Dutch.
However, he did send letters to the Royal Society, a group of scientists in London known more formally as, The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. The discoveries Antonie had made were certain to improve natural knowledge. They could be one of the biggest leaps in all of natural history, actually. If people would listen.
People weren’t in a hurry to believe him, but after a closer look, some began to come around on the delftse donderslag of information he was giving the world. He ultimately sent 100s of letters to the society, detailing his discoveries. They were translated from Dutch and began to shake the science world like the buildings in Delft back in 1654.
As a result, he got pretty famous. He was a rockstar microscopist – soon the most famous one during his own lifetime. Eager for a chance to see what he saw, famous people, important people, kings of nations were knocking on his door – people like Peter the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and James II of England, who I guess wasn’t that great, or at least was confident enough in himself not to put the word great in his name. They all wanted to meet the microscope man and take a peek at the tiny world to which he had opened the door.
Many of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes were available and offered for their enjoyment. But not Antonie’s best ones. Those were secret. No one was allowed to see them.
But Mr. Leeuwenhoek. I am Peter the Great. The Great. It’s right there in the name. I deserve to see this miraculous tool
I’m sorry Mr. The Great, but they are for my eyes only.
But I am the tsar of Russia. How can you say no to me.
It’s easy. No. My eyes, my scopes. I will give you this. It is very special.
What is it?
Do you like eels?
Oh I love eels!
Well this is a viewer I’ve prepared for you so you can look at the blood circulating through and eel’s tail.
It looks like a glass tube with a magnifying lens.
Precisely. Here’s what you’re gonna do: Get yourself an eel, slide it down headfirst into the tube, and then enjoy the show as you look through the lens I’ve attached to the side near its slimy tail.
Well sir, I’m disappointed on one hand, but, I have to say this eel viewer has me very excited. Thank you sir. Now, someone get me an eel, please?
One eel for Peter the Great, coming up!
Over his lifetime, Antonie made over 550 microscopes, but today fewer than 10% of them survive. Most of those, 26 in total, were given to the Royal Society when he died in 1727 at the age of 90. A few years later most of his stuff was auctioned off. And at the time, most people weren’t thinking about preserving things. So who knows what happened to them over the centuries. Heck maybe someone used them as mousetraps.
Despite them being gone, his work remains. Thanks to his curiosity, respect for science and dedication to learning, his discoveries, made as an amateur, changed our understanding of the world profoundly.
So think about the real delftse donderslag he gave us the next time you wash your hands, or go swimming in a lake, or stick a live fresh eel in your eel viewer. I know I will.
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