Colonial America telescopes and microscopes

[Eoghan]

Anyone know where I can get images of these items likely to be used by Cotton Mather?

 

[Wayne]

My first thought would be to punch "colonial american telescopes" into a Google search, and then click the "Images" tab up in the Google toolbar.

That search does in fact produce some useful images. There's also a helpful article, here

Astronomers and Stargazers : The Colonial Williamsburg Official History Site

The founding of Jamestown and the invention of the telescope happened in the same generation. In 1608, the year after Captain John Smith and company built the fort, Galileo got word in Italy that a lens maker in Holland, probably Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, had built an "optic reed . . . a certain device by means of which all things at a very great distance can be seen as if they were nearby." Galileo was one among a host of individuals who inquired about the gadget. What set him apart from his colleagues was that he was clever enough to use diplomatic channels to acquire the recipe for constructing one. He obtained a pair of spectacle lenses—the term comes from lentil, the shape of which each piece of glass approximated—placed them at opposite ends of a hollow tube at the sum of their focal lengths, and fashioned his own spyglass. He turned it on the heavens and saw mountains on the moon, moons moving around Jupiter, and spots on the surface of the sun. His observations contributed to a sea change in how we understand the universe.

 

[Constantlyreforming]

cool!