Klaas van Berkel
The city of Middelburg, cradle of the telescope 45
Rienk Vermij
The telescope at the court of the stadtholder Maurits 73
Rolf Willach
The long road to the invention of the telescope 93
Katrien Vanagt
Suspicious spectacles. Medical perspectives on eyeglasses,
the case of Hieronymus Mercurialis 115
Sven Dupre
William Bourne’s invention. Projecting a telescope and optical
speculation in Elizabethan England 129
A. Mark Smith
Alhacen and Kepler and the origins of modern lens-theory 147
Eileen Reeves
Complete inventions: The mirror and the telescope 167
Albert Van Helden
Galileo and the telescope 183
Mario Biagioli
Did Galileo copy the telescope? A ‘new’ letter by Paolo Sarpi 203
Marvin Bolt & Michael Korey
The world’s oldest surviving telescopes 231
Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis
Labour on lenses: Isaac Beeckman’s notes on lens making 257
Giuseppe Molesini
Testing telescope optics of seventeenth-century Italy 271
Antoni Malet
Kepler’s legacy: telescopes and geometrical optics, 1611-1669 281
Henk Zoomers
The Netherlands, Siam and the telescope.
The first Asian encounter with a Dutch invention 301
Albert Clement
Music as a liberal art and the invention of the telescope 321
Bibliography 341