Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Land, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and I thought we should start today with
Speaker 1: a question about science, one that is maybe more vexing
Speaker 1: the more you think about it. So an often unexamined
Speaker 1: assumption that undergird's scientific investigation all of science is this
Speaker 1: idea that there are laws of nature, right, and that
Speaker 1: those laws are are physically fundamental, and they apply everywhere
Speaker 1: and they are never violated. Right. Yeah, it would be um,
Speaker 1: it would be catastrophic if science changed from say country
Speaker 1: to country or county to county. Right, you go across
Speaker 1: the state line and you fall upright. Yeah. So water
Speaker 1: boils at a hundred degrees celsius or two twelve fahrenheit
Speaker 1: in my kitchen, it should also boil at the same
Speaker 1: temperature in my bedroom, or in the kitchen of the
Speaker 1: white castle down the street, or a hundred miles away
Speaker 1: in a different town. Right now. You might interrupt there
Speaker 1: and say, oh, but actually water sometimes does boil at
Speaker 1: a different temperature, right, Like at high elevations, uh, where
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure is lower, it's easier for water to boil
Speaker 1: because there's less pressure pressing down on the water, so
Speaker 1: it actually does boil at a lower temperature, like at
Speaker 1: three thousand meters, water boils at more like nine d
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. And in fact, Robert, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever read these, there are great stories that take
Speaker 1: this to the extreme. Did you know about the unbearable
Speaker 1: sadness of boiling potatoes on Mount Everest? So there are
Speaker 1: these stories about mountaineers trying to cook on Mount Everest
Speaker 1: and they would boil potatoes in a pot of water
Speaker 1: to eat them, but they boil them and they boil
Speaker 1: them and boil them for hours and hours, and after
Speaker 1: hours of cooking, the potatoes were still basically raw. And
Speaker 1: the problem is on Mount Everest that you're up so
Speaker 1: high that the boiling point is so low. The boiling
Speaker 1: water in the pot is not hot enough to cook potatoes.
Speaker 1: It's like sort of like trying to cook them in
Speaker 1: hot tap water even though it's boiling. It's a In fact,
Speaker 1: I would say it's actually like an inverse pressure cooker, right,
Speaker 1: you know, pressure cooker allows your food to get hotter
Speaker 1: because of the increased pressure going up on Mount Everest.
Speaker 1: And trying to cook something is like doing the opposite.
Speaker 1: But actually, you know, there, we've not discovered an absence
Speaker 1: of an underlying law just because water boils at a
Speaker 1: different temperature at different elevations. What we've actually discovered is
Speaker 1: a deeper underlying law that the boiling point of a
Speaker 1: liquid varies along with pressure, and that that relationship is
Speaker 1: mathematically deterministic. And I would say this is the assumption
Speaker 1: that pretty much guides almost all of applied science in
Speaker 1: the world today. It's the idea that the laws of
Speaker 1: physics are out there and they don't change or very
Speaker 1: depending on special cases or where you are. But how
Speaker 1: do we know that conditions on the Earth and the
Speaker 1: Moon might be different, but that the underlying physical laws
Speaker 1: that give rise to those conditions are exactly the same.
Speaker 1: And maybe one thing that's important to point out in
Speaker 1: understanding this is that people haven't always thought this way.
Speaker 1: There is a powerful tradition, going back into the ancient world,
Speaker 1: sort of viewing the behaviors of things in reality as
Speaker 1: a large collection of special cases, governed by their own
Speaker 1: special essences and and by by special circumstances, maybe like
Speaker 1: divine intervention, maybe like some types of magic, maybe just
Speaker 1: by you know, the essence of the way a person
Speaker 1: falls is different than the way a planet falls, because
Speaker 1: a planet is a different thing than a person, And
Speaker 1: so you you'd end up with the idea that the
Speaker 1: heavens are not subject to the same physical forces as
Speaker 1: the Earth. And we see this all throughout ancient cosmology,
Speaker 1: just thinking that there are different different laws applying to
Speaker 1: different places and circumstances in the universe. Now, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you could argue that, well, we don't really know that
Speaker 1: physical laws are the same everywhere, right, and and that's
Speaker 1: kind of true, like at the very edges of our understanding.
Speaker 1: There could be ways of arguing that physical laws aren't
Speaker 1: really laws, you know, maybe they're just generalizations we make
Speaker 1: based on observation, or maybe there could be cosmological scenarios
Speaker 1: when they're different. You know, maybe in the beginning of
Speaker 1: the universe the laws were different or could have been different.
Speaker 1: But for the most purposes in the present, that assumption
Speaker 1: that the physical laws are the same everywhere has proven
Speaker 1: extremely useful and generating accurate scientific theories that make correct
Speaker 1: predictions and create powerful technology. So I wanted to think
Speaker 1: about at the beginning of today. Where did this assumption
Speaker 1: of the uniformity of physical laws come from? How did
Speaker 1: we end up thinking this way about the world, that
Speaker 1: there's just sort of like a set of underlying ways
Speaker 1: that things work and that that governs everything. Well, as
Speaker 1: the title of the show indicates, we're going to tie
Speaker 1: it to an invention, you're exactly right now, we don't
Speaker 1: want to tie it entirely to this invention, because there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of different strains of thinking throughout history
Speaker 1: that I think have contributed to this way of seeing
Speaker 1: the world that we generally share now. But I believe
Speaker 1: one really powerful moment of transition here was centered around
Speaker 1: a particular piece of technology, and that technology is the
Speaker 1: subject of today's episode, which is the telescope. Yes, more
Speaker 1: specifically the optical telescope. Right now, we're just doing one
Speaker 1: episode today here, so we're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to focus on all the different kinds of telescopes. We
Speaker 1: may come back to them in the future, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna be focusing on specifically the earliest optical refracting telescopes,
Speaker 1: right and uh, and yeah, it's really it really is
Speaker 1: kind of hard to to overstate the importance of the
Speaker 1: telescope in the history of science and in the history
Speaker 1: of our understanding of the cosmos. Yeah, there's a great
Speaker 1: quote about the invention from the Invention of the Telescope
Speaker 1: by Albert van Helden. From van Helden writes, quote, among
Speaker 1: the scientific instruments which have played an important role in
Speaker 1: the growth of man's knowledge of the world around him,
Speaker 1: the telescope occupies a position of historic pre eminence, rivaled
Speaker 1: only by the microscope, which was a natural outgrowth of
Speaker 1: the telescope. In a real sense, the telescope can be
Speaker 1: considered the prototype of modern scientific instruments, and learned men
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century, the first century of its existence,
Speaker 1: were acutely aware of its important role in the formation
Speaker 1: of a new astronomy. Yeah, and some of the earliest
Speaker 1: accounts of what was viewed through the very first telescopes.
Speaker 1: You can you can kind of feel the electricity coming
Speaker 1: off of the writing, right, like, like the excitement with
Speaker 1: seeing stuff that not just seeing new things. I mean
Speaker 1: we still see new things in the heavens that people
Speaker 1: have never seen before. Just this year there was the
Speaker 1: very first direct imaging of a black hole, not using
Speaker 1: an optical telescope, but but using you know, a form
Speaker 1: of magnifying the heavens. And that was astonishing because we
Speaker 1: were looking at something we've never seen before. But as
Speaker 1: amazing as that was, what if instead of just seeing
Speaker 1: a new thing, you were able to see the universe
Speaker 1: in a completely different way that now, for the first time,
Speaker 1: you can look at really anything beyond the moon as
Speaker 1: more than a point of light. Yeah, it's really I
Speaker 1: mean it's really hard to avoid optical metaphors for this
Speaker 1: optical technology. Like I want to think, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like being able having poor eyesight your entire life and
Speaker 1: then finally putting on a pair of glasses and seeing
Speaker 1: things come into sharper detail, you know, solidifying things that
Speaker 1: you suspected already, but also bringing you know, fine print
Speaker 1: into view that was invisible to you previously. That sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, And I think that's another reason why
Speaker 1: the telescope is such. Um, you know, a major invention
Speaker 1: is that we are predominantly, you know, optical beings. We
Speaker 1: depend so much on our sense of sight, and this
Speaker 1: so greatly improved our ability to do optically see things. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing that's worth thinking about is the
Speaker 1: very idea that that we could even view the heavens
Speaker 1: with a with a viewing instrument, you know, with a
Speaker 1: magnification device that's entirely contingent on the details of life
Speaker 1: on planet Earth. If you go to another planet where
Speaker 1: maybe life forms evolved at the bottom of an ocean
Speaker 1: around geothermal vents or growing off of some kind of
Speaker 1: like you know, chemosynthesis process in a clouded, hazy atmosphere
Speaker 1: like that of Venus or that of Titan, where you
Speaker 1: just can't you can't see the guy. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no reason we had to evolve on a planet where
Speaker 1: you could look at the stars every night, but somehow
Speaker 1: we did. And of course those stars have always intrigued us.
Speaker 1: I mean, human history is a story of of people's
Speaker 1: looking to the heavens and trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: is going on up there. Yeah, and that's a great
Speaker 1: point we should start with, which is that astronomy did
Speaker 1: not begin with the telescope. Astronomy long predates the telescope.
Speaker 1: There is a vast tradition of naked eye astronomy going
Speaker 1: back in ancient history, and sometimes it's astonishing what ancient
Speaker 1: and medieval astronomers could figure out. It could discuss ever
Speaker 1: without optical telescopes, just using the naked eye, sometimes maybe
Speaker 1: in conjunction with other primitive tools like measuring instruments or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, for starters, like other planets were known before
Speaker 1: before the telescope. Right, Oh yeah, a Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
Speaker 1: and Saturn are all observable with the naked eye. Uh,
Speaker 1: Uranus and Neptune are generally considered to be only visible
Speaker 1: via the telescope with with an asterix there. Yeah, Uranus
Speaker 1: is uranus. We always fight about how to pronounce this Urinus.
Speaker 1: Let's say, Uranus is technically I think visible with the
Speaker 1: naked eye under extremely favorable conditions, but it's very, very faint.
Speaker 1: It was officially usually recognized as being discovered by William
Speaker 1: Herschel in Sight one with the telescope. Of course, telescopes
Speaker 1: had been around for a good long while in Sight one,
Speaker 1: but it had probably been observed by others in centuries
Speaker 1: past who thought it was some kind of faint star,
Speaker 1: just barely visible. Herschel actually initially thought Uranus was a comet.
Speaker 1: On our other podcast, Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we
Speaker 1: we've been kind of considering the different planets and there
Speaker 1: in their their their moons. From time to time, we
Speaker 1: really we really need to go to look at the
Speaker 1: outer planets a little more. Oh yeah, I wonder if
Speaker 1: there's there's much to say there. I feel like the
Speaker 1: really sexy moons show up around Saturn and Jupiter. Like
Speaker 1: on Jupiter you've got Europa, which is everybody's favorite to
Speaker 1: find some potential life at because they think their oceans
Speaker 1: underneath the icy crust. And then you've got Io, which
Speaker 1: is just a wonderful yellow hell of volcanoes and sulfur
Speaker 1: and all that great stuff. And then around Saturn, of
Speaker 1: course you've got Titan, which is an intriguing mystery. I'm
Speaker 1: not aware of anything like that going on with Neptune
Speaker 1: or Uranus, but maybe I haven't given them a fair ship.
Speaker 1: I mean, the planets themselves, I think would be would
Speaker 1: be good topics, you know, uh, just so we can
Speaker 1: say that we have covered all of them, uh you know,
Speaker 1: just in time to have to like update with new
Speaker 1: information for all of Oh yeah, well I can't. We'll
Speaker 1: do We'll do an episode on Uranus just so we
Speaker 1: can pronounce its seventeen different Yeah. I believe a listener
Speaker 1: provided a different pronunciation recently, didn't they we heard I
Speaker 1: think we've heard uranus. Of course, we've heard uranus. We've
Speaker 1: heard uraas uh. I think that's it for now. Well,
Speaker 1: we gotta bring you back to the telescope. Okay, So
Speaker 1: here here's a question. I wonder about how many stars
Speaker 1: can you actually see without a telescope. I know there's
Speaker 1: got to be some general cut off point that most
Speaker 1: people aren't going to be able to see stars below
Speaker 1: a certain brightness. Yes, yeah, there's there's a there's a
Speaker 1: there's a system here for determining how visible various objects are,
Speaker 1: and there is a ballpark number. According to astronomer dorit
Speaker 1: Hof Late of Yale University, the total number of stars
Speaker 1: in the sky that can currently be seen from both
Speaker 1: hemispheres and given optimal conditions, is nine thousand and ninety
Speaker 1: six or four thousand, five forty eight stars per hemisphere,
Speaker 1: give or take, depending on the position in the season.
Speaker 1: It's monomers use the magnitude scale to measure star and
Speaker 1: planet brightness, so the higher the number, the fainter the
Speaker 1: object is in the sky. So the naked eye limit
Speaker 1: for most humans is six point five. Now, really bright
Speaker 1: objects actually have a negative rating on this scale. So
Speaker 1: a full moon is a negative twelve point seven highly visible,
Speaker 1: and the sun, yeah, everybody's seen this, uh, is a
Speaker 1: negative twenty six point seven. Now, I was looking at
Speaker 1: an article on this from Sky and Telescope, which is
Speaker 1: a wonderful website for anyone that's interested in astronomy, and
Speaker 1: Bob King has an article from titled nine thousand and
Speaker 1: ninety six stars in the sky? Is that all? And
Speaker 1: and he shares the following that was just a nice
Speaker 1: quote about the visibility that this. You know, this brings
Speaker 1: up quote. While the total number of naked eye stars
Speaker 1: may seem unimpressive, consider what happens in the sky in
Speaker 1: and around cities where most of us live. From the suburbs,
Speaker 1: the magnitude limit is around plus four for a worldwide
Speaker 1: total of about nine hundred stars, or half that for
Speaker 1: your location. If we set the city limit at magnitude
Speaker 1: plus two stars similar to the Big Dipper in brightness,
Speaker 1: we're left with just seventies stars worldwide, or thirty five
Speaker 1: stars visible from say downtown Chicago or Boston, right, because
Speaker 1: you're only ever seeing half. Yeah, that's that's a paltry
Speaker 1: number of stars. That kind of makes me hate our cities. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, light pollution is a real detriment to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in any kind of you know, amateur or
Speaker 1: certainly professional astronomy. I think I've mentioned this on one
Speaker 1: of our podcasts before, and at the risk of getting sappy,
Speaker 1: I one time went to a rural area in Oregon,
Speaker 1: you know, not near any big cities, and I guess
Speaker 1: it must have been very clear and dry in the night,
Speaker 1: and and I went outside, and I remember I saw
Speaker 1: so many stars. I I felt like I was going
Speaker 1: to fall over. And it was overwhelming. How different the
Speaker 1: sky is in a really dark sky area. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a similar experience in Georgia's own okay, Finoki Swamp,
Speaker 1: which is an area where is it's just there's no
Speaker 1: light pollution. You get out in just the midst of
Speaker 1: this enormous swamp land, and the stars are just overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Like it's no wonder that people sometimes and let's say
Speaker 1: that they've encountered a you know, they've seen a UFO
Speaker 1: in the sky. Um, because in a way it's like
Speaker 1: like seeing the cosmos like that, um, you know, unfiltered
Speaker 1: by light pollution. It it you know, it's It's almost
Speaker 1: like seeing some sort of alien spaceship. You know, you're
Speaker 1: you're confronted with the enormity of the cosmos. It was
Speaker 1: a borderline religious experience for me. I mean it felt
Speaker 1: like it felt like a revelation. I've gone my whole
Speaker 1: life on Earth looking up at the sky at night
Speaker 1: and never seen anything like this. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: an informed look at the skies, even from a city
Speaker 1: such as Atlanta, you can you can still have some
Speaker 1: you know, some interesting, you know, astronomical observations like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's wonderful video to be able to say, pinpoint
Speaker 1: Mars in the sky and pointed out to somebody and
Speaker 1: think about the fact that that is it. This is
Speaker 1: the planet that we've you know that do you hear
Speaker 1: about on the news that you see these this footage job.
Speaker 1: There's so many questions have been asked about there it
Speaker 1: is in the sky, I am observing it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've tried to cultivate that skill before, being able
Speaker 1: to just point things out in the sky, and I've
Speaker 1: never gotten good at it. Well, the apps really help
Speaker 1: these days. There's so many great um Star and Planet
Speaker 1: i D apps you can sort of cheat off of
Speaker 1: those and then have the experience you know, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do like trying to find the direction of the center
Speaker 1: of the galaxy at any given time and point in
Speaker 1: the direction of Sagittary as a star, the supermassive black hole,
Speaker 1: which I know our descendants must be destined to someday
Speaker 1: just drive straight into. Now. Of course, all the stuff
Speaker 1: we were just talking about is looking up with the
Speaker 1: naked eye with a tell us gope. Things are very different,
Speaker 1: right because they magnify light so uh so with just
Speaker 1: the original refracting optical telescope, which was just a convex
Speaker 1: lens that gathered light from a wider field, and then
Speaker 1: it was paired at a certain distance with a concave eyepiece. Uh. Galileo,
Speaker 1: when he was looking into the sky was astonished by
Speaker 1: what he saw. He wrote, I have seen stars in
Speaker 1: myriads which have never been seen before, and which surpassed
Speaker 1: the old previously known stars in number more than ten times. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean we have to think back to that magnitude scale,
Speaker 1: you know, and the idea that suddenly, uh, cosmic bodies
Speaker 1: of a magnitude or more beyond previous human observation are
Speaker 1: now visible. Yeah, like it's it's you know, it's really
Speaker 1: crazy to imagine that. You really have to underline that statement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this would have been at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. He's using the most primitive telescopes. Now, of
Speaker 1: course we see it's funny we can look can do
Speaker 1: like a little tiny patch of the sky where before
Speaker 1: there would have been nothing, and with the powerful telescopes
Speaker 1: of today, we zoom in and see almost like ah,
Speaker 1: it's like when you you know, zoom in on water
Speaker 1: with a microscope and you see all the little bacteria
Speaker 1: living in it, except now we see galaxies full of
Speaker 1: stars where previously we thought there was nothing. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we come back, we're going to get to
Speaker 1: the question who invented the telescope? Where did it come from?
Speaker 1: And and more importantly, like what does it say about
Speaker 1: the time the timing of this invention? Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So now we're talking about the invention of the original
Speaker 1: optical telescope, and we should start off saying at the
Speaker 1: very top that credit for the invention of the telescope
Speaker 1: is highly disputed. What counts you know, do just like
Speaker 1: descriptions written in a book count if we don't have
Speaker 1: evidence that it was actually made, what were people actually
Speaker 1: talking about when they wrote about various kinds of magnification. Historically,
Speaker 1: credit for the invention of the telescope is most often
Speaker 1: given to a figure we're going to mention in just
Speaker 1: a minute, a Dutch spectacle maker named Hans Lipper shy
Speaker 1: or Hans lippersh lippers hay is how I've seen multiple
Speaker 1: different pronunciations. Uh so, yeah, so lippers hey, Lipper she
Speaker 1: lippers high. We'll we'll say them all, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different contenders that that have competed in
Speaker 1: the minds of historians, and we won't have time to
Speaker 1: mention them all. We will highlight a few, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, it's we we really have to stress
Speaker 1: that not only it's not just one of these things
Speaker 1: where it was disputed later, where like historians are saying, actually,
Speaker 1: this person working in this other land had you know,
Speaker 1: some other ideas or seemed to have a product type
Speaker 1: and no, I mean it was disputed at the time
Speaker 1: in Lipper's own country. Yeah, and we'll touch on the
Speaker 1: details of that. Well. I think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that it's so disputed is that the essential technolo ology
Speaker 1: for creating the telescope had existed for a long time
Speaker 1: before anybody ever made a telescope exactly. So Leprosy lived
Speaker 1: fifteen seventy through sixteen nineteen, and it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: that here at this point in in his life, he was,
Speaker 1: of course a spectacle maker, and spectacles had been around
Speaker 1: in Europe for at least three centuries. Uh. And I'd
Speaker 1: actually love to come back to a future episode of
Speaker 1: Invention where we'll talk about those three centuries, talk about uh, glasses,
Speaker 1: spectacles where they came from. But basically the idea is,
Speaker 1: as Europe emerged from the Dark Ages and its economy
Speaker 1: rebounded from the invasions of the Dark Ages, it became
Speaker 1: increasingly beneficial to ensure that functional eyesight was maintained in
Speaker 1: their aging scholars and scribes. So that that's why eyeglasses
Speaker 1: west by spectacles emerged really in Europe, well right, I mean,
Speaker 1: eyeglasses would be a technology that extended the working life
Speaker 1: of people who copied documents for living and because they
Speaker 1: didn't have a printing press yet in some of that time,
Speaker 1: hand copying of documents was incredibly important for preserving knowledge
Speaker 1: and spreading it. Yeah, this is the necessity in the
Speaker 1: invention scenario here. Um. You know, eyeglasses are largely attributed
Speaker 1: to a Venetian invention, sometimes around thirteen hundred and for
Speaker 1: our fellow name of the rose Fans out there, the
Speaker 1: story of murders in a medieval abbey that they take
Speaker 1: place in thirteen seven, and their their use is certainly
Speaker 1: factors into a burn of Echo's plot. The use of spectacles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the main detective in the story, William of Baskerville. He
Speaker 1: has a pair of spectacles, but they're not like normal, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, you can just go get new
Speaker 1: spectacles somewhere, Like if he loses them, that's a problem. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. But yeah, some three hundred years separate the
Speaker 1: birth of spectacles and ultimately the birth of the spectacle
Speaker 1: making trade. Uh from this event right where a spectacle
Speaker 1: maker takes the technology and creates tell us gop out
Speaker 1: of it. And then the reason for creating this telescope
Speaker 1: is it turns out it's not to gaze at the heavens,
Speaker 1: but to better kill people on the battlefield. I see.
Speaker 1: So basically and this is this is the story as
Speaker 1: it specifically concerns Lippers. During the early sixteen hundreds, Dutch
Speaker 1: military reformer Prince Maurice of Nassau offered monetary rewards for
Speaker 1: any inventions that could help modernize the Dutch fighting force.
Speaker 1: Lippers took his knowledge of spectacles and applied them to
Speaker 1: the problem, developing what he called the Looker, which he
Speaker 1: filed a patent for in six eight and their varying
Speaker 1: versions of Lippers's eureka moment ranging from him observing children
Speaker 1: playing with lenses in his shop and watching them, you know,
Speaker 1: hold one lens up and then hold the other lens
Speaker 1: up and make objects at a distance appear closer. And
Speaker 1: then there are also just accusations that he he flat
Speaker 1: out stole the idea from someone else, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to that as well. But the question that emerges from
Speaker 1: all this is wouldn't this invention have been obvious to
Speaker 1: anyone familiar with the three hundred year old technology of spectacles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you've spectacles work on the principle of magnification through
Speaker 1: refraction through glass. So you've got glass as a transparent medium.
Speaker 1: You can make a rounded edge on the outside of
Speaker 1: one of these discs of glass right like and basically
Speaker 1: it's it's all detailed in this uh, this this story
Speaker 1: of children playing with with with lenses like someone would
Speaker 1: have surely seen that before. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: ultimately exactly why the States General of the Netherlands denied
Speaker 1: his patent application, as well as the application of two
Speaker 1: other individuals, Jacob Midius, a lens maker from a family
Speaker 1: of glass workers, and Zacharias Johnson, a spectacle maker. And
Speaker 1: they've both been proposed as the alternate inventor of the telescope,
Speaker 1: right and in other names and plots are thrown into
Speaker 1: the mix as well, and and sometimes the microscope is
Speaker 1: likewise brought up because the microscope has we already mentioned
Speaker 1: or brought up in that quote we were at it's
Speaker 1: kind of an extension of the same technology. But when
Speaker 1: when Lippers, say, sought a thirty year patent or he
Speaker 1: also was going to settle for a yearly pension to
Speaker 1: prevent the lookers sale to rival kingdoms, the States General
Speaker 1: declared that the invention was already too widely known and
Speaker 1: too easy to copy. Still, the Prince awarded Lippers a
Speaker 1: nine florins and asked him to make the looker binocular
Speaker 1: okay for two eyes. So just not very impressed about
Speaker 1: the telescope. Well impressed enough to pay him nine hundred florins,
Speaker 1: you know, and to and to use it. But you know,
Speaker 1: I guess you can well imagine the situation where the
Speaker 1: military uh individuals are saying, yes, this sounds great, We're
Speaker 1: gonna revolutionize everything, and then the patent office is like, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: but let's not get carried away. Let's not get this
Speaker 1: guy a patent because the the im for the knowledge
Speaker 1: of this technology is already out there. Yeah. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the sources we were both looking at about this
Speaker 1: story of the invention of the telescope is the great
Speaker 1: uh James Burke's discussion and connections. And one of the
Speaker 1: things he does that's interesting is he connects the story
Speaker 1: of the invention of the telescope. I guess he's all
Speaker 1: about creating connections. Uh. He connects it to the invention
Speaker 1: of the time piece, which I guess is something else
Speaker 1: going on in the Dutch economy at the time, the
Speaker 1: desire to make more accurate time pieces, because, like he
Speaker 1: writes about how the springs of low quality and the
Speaker 1: watches of the time would mean that some watches might
Speaker 1: lose four minutes a day. Yeah, and the telescope is
Speaker 1: will probably continue to touch on here and it has
Speaker 1: this this definite relationship with precision and precision instruments of
Speaker 1: the time and those that would come afterwards. Um. But
Speaker 1: Burke also, you can, you know, makes the point here
Speaker 1: about the connection between invention and social need. While there
Speaker 1: was a social need for spectacles, which we we've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: there was not one for the telescope. And I just
Speaker 1: want to read a quote from Connections again. Connection was
Speaker 1: both a television series but also is a is a
Speaker 1: wonderful book. Both are widely available out there. If you
Speaker 1: want to pick it out, pick it up. And if
Speaker 1: you're a fan of of this podcast and just the
Speaker 1: history of technology and inventions, you really can't go wrong
Speaker 1: with Connections. So Burke rights quote. But there was no
Speaker 1: demand for the telescope during this period, which was prior
Speaker 1: to the invention of gunpowder and the use of the
Speaker 1: cannon on the battlefield, when the view of the universe
Speaker 1: precluded the existence of planetary bodies as three dimensional observable phenomena.
Speaker 1: This is why the moment of invention is so often
Speaker 1: identified with the moment in which the artifact comes into use.
Speaker 1: In many cases, there are times when an invention is
Speaker 1: technologically possible and in which indeed it may appear necessary,
Speaker 1: as the telescope may have, but without a market, the
Speaker 1: idea will not sell, and in the absence of the
Speaker 1: technical and social infrastructure to support it, the invention will
Speaker 1: not survive. This reminds me of the episode or episode
Speaker 1: I think we did a couple on the wheel, a
Speaker 1: technology that it appears within many cultures around the world
Speaker 1: for a long time, there was the perfect capability to
Speaker 1: make it and familiarity with the concept. So it's like
Speaker 1: they understood what a wheel was, and they had everything
Speaker 1: they needed to make wheels. They just didn't make wheeled vehicles. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the question is like, why why would you
Speaker 1: Why would you know how to do it and have
Speaker 1: everything you need to do it, but not yet do it.
Speaker 1: And Burke is pointing out that sometimes it just it does.
Speaker 1: It doesn't occur to people that there's a particular use
Speaker 1: for a thing. By the way, Burke is referring to
Speaker 1: the Western invention and use of gunpowder here, which which
Speaker 1: has a history very worthy of its own invention episode
Speaker 1: in the future. But the short version is that the
Speaker 1: Chinese were aware of gunpowder as early as the ninth century,
Speaker 1: and there are various accounts of gunpowder in Europe going
Speaker 1: back to the hundreds. But guns would not become a
Speaker 1: military technology worthy of telescopic sites for some time basically
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six, as I believe, and warfare itself hadn't
Speaker 1: evolved to depend on it yet. So Burke's argument is
Speaker 1: that the technological advancements of warfare didn't reach the point
Speaker 1: uh and you know, at which this sort of lens
Speaker 1: technology promised or even uh you know, suggested a real payoff,
Speaker 1: not until the dawn of the sixteen hundreds, and so
Speaker 1: the telescope was finally borne into an age increasingly in
Speaker 1: need of long distance vision for military purposes and a
Speaker 1: tool to star gaze beyond the limits of the human eye. Again,
Speaker 1: to Brooke's point, we can sit around all day and
Speaker 1: think of all about all the places and times it
Speaker 1: would have been useful before the seventeenth century and could
Speaker 1: have been applied. I mean, navigation seems that you know,
Speaker 1: one of the key possibilities to me, But ultimately that's
Speaker 1: just not how it came together, but camp but it
Speaker 1: certainly did come together. And in fact, less than two
Speaker 1: years after Lip says patent Uh, an individual by the
Speaker 1: name of Galileo published a ground pay breaking treaties And
Speaker 1: will come back to Galileo in just a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Before we get to Galileo, though, we should talk about
Speaker 1: a few of the other names that have been suggested
Speaker 1: as alternate inventors of the telescope, because, as we said,
Speaker 1: there there were a bunch of people who could have
Speaker 1: been maybe given credit depending on what counts, what kind
Speaker 1: of evidence you allow. One alternative that might not be
Speaker 1: surprising given given a lot of the optical advances that
Speaker 1: that existed in the in the Muslim world, especially in
Speaker 1: the medieval period, is that several names from the air
Speaker 1: world showed up on this list. Yeah. Yeah, for starters,
Speaker 1: Like a key individual is al Hazen, which is the
Speaker 1: Latin name for for the mathematician and astronomer Uh. Even
Speaker 1: al hatham who lived at through Tin forty h ce
Speaker 1: Um a k a Abu Ali al hatham Um is
Speaker 1: a major figure. Particularly we have to consider his book
Speaker 1: of Optics, which dealt with magnification and refraction, and which
Speaker 1: ultimately influenced the technological traditions that would lead to the
Speaker 1: invention of the telescope. At least he wrote commentaries on Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy,
Speaker 1: and Galen. His writings were pretty influential in the in
Speaker 1: the West at the you know, particularly among the likes
Speaker 1: of Bacon and Kepler. Uh. Quote this is from os Marshall.
Speaker 1: Um al Hazen and the telescope. He observed the magnifying
Speaker 1: power of spheres and lenses and experimented with cylindrical, concave
Speaker 1: and parabolic metal mirrors. So basically he's a figure that
Speaker 1: some consider capable of inventing the telescope. Like if you're
Speaker 1: looking in history for you know, to pinpoint and individual
Speaker 1: who who could have very well created a telescope, Um
Speaker 1: al Hazen is your guy. Uh. Though there is it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be any clear evidence that he did,
Speaker 1: but certainly all the skills were on the table some
Speaker 1: six hundred years before Galileo. Another individual in the air
Speaker 1: of world that pops up is um Taki al Din
Speaker 1: or uh Taki od Den. Muhammad had been Maroof. He
Speaker 1: was an Automan astronomer of note he lived fifty six
Speaker 1: or fifteen eighty five, so much closer to the time
Speaker 1: period we're discussing, um, you know, in in European traditions
Speaker 1: here for the invention of the telescope. And uh, he
Speaker 1: invented a number of pumps and clocks, uh, including an
Speaker 1: astronomical clock. So again we're getting down to the technology
Speaker 1: of precision again. And he apparently described an invention that
Speaker 1: made far away objects appear closer. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: he's talking about a telescope there. It's possible that he
Speaker 1: invented a telescope in roughly fifteen seventy four, but there's
Speaker 1: there's no clear consensus on this. But again an individual
Speaker 1: where we we can look to and say this, it's
Speaker 1: possible this individual created a telescope. And if they didn't,
Speaker 1: there's no reason why they couldn't have. You know, they
Speaker 1: had again all the tools were on the table. Uh.
Speaker 1: There There have been other suggestions of some previous figures
Speaker 1: from England, like Roger Bacon or like this guy named
Speaker 1: Leonard Diggis who was apparently, uh, he was into surveying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is to show you, just like the how
Speaker 1: how removed some of the descriptions are this was basically
Speaker 1: his son. Leonard Diggin's son wrote that he you that
Speaker 1: his father had used a proportional glass to view distant objects,
Speaker 1: and this would have been the mid fifteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: so some historians have made a case for this, saying
Speaker 1: like this, they're talking about a telescope. This guy invented
Speaker 1: a telescope. But we just don't have much to go
Speaker 1: on beyond that. All Right, This next guy I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is not an especially strong contender, at
Speaker 1: least I don't think so for actually having invented a telescope.
Speaker 1: I would say that the credit that is possibly given
Speaker 1: to him or was claimed by him for having invented
Speaker 1: a telescope seems to be based on some vaguely written
Speaker 1: passages about being able to see things at a distance
Speaker 1: through through refractive lenses. But but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about him because he is very weird and a
Speaker 1: fascinating figure, and the more I found out about him,
Speaker 1: the more I wanted to to go deep. His name
Speaker 1: is Giovanni Batista de la Porto or Giambatista de la Porta,
Speaker 1: an Italian natural philosopher. A minor Neapolitan noble born around
Speaker 1: fifteen thirty five died in sixteen fifteen. Sometimes depicted as
Speaker 1: something of a sorcerer, sometimes as an enthusiast of the sciences,
Speaker 1: sometimes as a quote professor of secrets. He was most notably,
Speaker 1: I think, the author of a popular book called Magia
Speaker 1: Naturalists meaning Natural Magic, which was a sort of encyclopedia
Speaker 1: of marvels and curiosities about the world. And this book
Speaker 1: has got everything it's it encompasses everything from facts about
Speaker 1: geology and chemistry to cosmetic beauty tips. I think it's
Speaker 1: got cooking tips in it. It's got demonology and his
Speaker 1: opinions on it, like like a cult philosophy. And then
Speaker 1: it's got this huge section on cryptography, including a whole
Speaker 1: chapter about how to send secret messages inside eggs. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to hear about these eggs. But but I
Speaker 1: do want to point out that he would have been
Speaker 1: a contemporary of John d uh the English um scientist,
Speaker 1: spy occultist who is also interested in cryptography. So uh,
Speaker 1: this was definitely a time to be into all of
Speaker 1: these things. But now, do tell me about these eggs.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it sounds like a type. Yes. Sixteenth century
Speaker 1: seventeenth century type of dude who's into demonology and refraction
Speaker 1: lenses and all that. Yeah, so sending secret messages inside eggs, eggs,
Speaker 1: egg based cryptography, why eggs? Well? In Magia Naturalis, Delaporta
Speaker 1: writes that quote, because when prisons are shut, eggs are
Speaker 1: not stopped by the papal inquisition, and no fraud is
Speaker 1: suspected to be in them. Well, not until you wrote
Speaker 1: about it in your book, so he writes about this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the idea is that Delaporta and Medieva his friends,
Speaker 1: were targets of the Italian Inquisition, and of course the
Speaker 1: inquisitions going on at the time. Uh. And apparently while
Speaker 1: you could not pass letters to friends imprisoned by the inquisitors,
Speaker 1: at least not without those letters being read or sensored
Speaker 1: or something, you could send your friends eggs, you know,
Speaker 1: you just bring them eggs in prison. So he explains
Speaker 1: many different methods for smuggling secret messages inside eggs, including
Speaker 1: by chemically treating the eggs. One method involves writing the
Speaker 1: message on paper. So you write out a letter and
Speaker 1: then you soften the egg shell with vinegar and you
Speaker 1: cut a tiny hole in the shell. With a knife
Speaker 1: and insert the letter written on paper into the egg,
Speaker 1: and then you put the egg in cold water to
Speaker 1: firm up the egg again and disguise the cut. Another
Speaker 1: method involves writing the message on the shell of the
Speaker 1: egg with an ink that's like especially prepared ink made
Speaker 1: out of galls alum and pickle and whatever that means.
Speaker 1: He says, pickle and then um, and then boiling the egg.
Speaker 1: And supposedly the message will wash off of the outer
Speaker 1: shell when the egg boils, But then when the egg
Speaker 1: is peeled, the message will appear written on the egg
Speaker 1: white inside because this stuff leeches through the shell. This
Speaker 1: is incredible. Why is this not our our easter? A
Speaker 1: messaging tradition? Yeah, that's right. The kids they go out
Speaker 1: hunting for eggs in the grass and then they pick
Speaker 1: one up that says, do not submit to the inquisitors,
Speaker 1: do not confess. Do not confess that we summoned the
Speaker 1: power of payment. But anyway, Also in Maggia Naturalis, there's
Speaker 1: a whole volume on lenses and refraction containing these vaguely
Speaker 1: written passages that mentioned, uh, you know, combining lenses and
Speaker 1: the ability to see things across distance. This apparently led
Speaker 1: to the later misunderstanding that he may have prefigured the
Speaker 1: invention of the telescope by uh liberty or lippershy or
Speaker 1: lippers hey or however you say it, uh and the
Speaker 1: other contemporaries. But modern scholars I think, seemed to be
Speaker 1: doubtful that Delaporta was actually describing a telescope in his writings,
Speaker 1: and there's certainly no record of him making or using one,
Speaker 1: though it appears he did work with some other types
Speaker 1: of lenses. Is more in the realm of spectacles or
Speaker 1: magnifying glass. Of course, John D is notable for having
Speaker 1: at least one lens of note that being more of
Speaker 1: a like a magical black mirror, which is which is
Speaker 1: currently I believe on display in the British Museum. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that. Yeah, look into it if
Speaker 1: you get a chance. It's probably a mirror of some
Speaker 1: historical mischief. Yeah, with Mesoamerican origins. I believe Christian and
Speaker 1: I did a two parter on stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: mind about John D where we discussed the details of it. Well,
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should take a break and then
Speaker 1: we come back. We can discuss the earliest uses of
Speaker 1: the telescope. And its impact on world history. Alright, we're back. So,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, the world was finally ready for the telescope.
Speaker 1: The technology was there, the understanding of optics, the ability
Speaker 1: to craft of the lenses, and and now you also
Speaker 1: had the necessity the market for it. People were clamoring
Speaker 1: for it, and we had the both the military, uh,
Speaker 1: interested in the creation of telescopes. But then you had
Speaker 1: plenty of star gates. There's plenty of the astronomers who
Speaker 1: were were hungry for such a device. Yeah, I'd say
Speaker 1: that even though it was commissioned as a weapon of war,
Speaker 1: like the real bomb that it set off, was this
Speaker 1: more theological, philosophical, scientific one. And so of course we
Speaker 1: have to talk about Galileo. Now, Galileo Galilei was a
Speaker 1: natural philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. He was the son
Speaker 1: of a cloth merchant from the city of Pisa. He
Speaker 1: lived fifteen sixty four to sixteen forty two, and he
Speaker 1: was in many ways, uh, sort of an ideal heretic, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't like to overplay the mythology of genius and
Speaker 1: historical inventors, but I think with Galileo, this is one
Speaker 1: case at least in my mind, where you can you
Speaker 1: can really make the case for a person who truly
Speaker 1: deserves to be thought of as a revolutionary genius who
Speaker 1: systematically challenged scientific and philosophical misconceptions of his day with
Speaker 1: kind of mercilessly careful thought and observation, and a champion
Speaker 1: of empirical method. You know, the mindset that says, okay,
Speaker 1: if you've got an idea about how the world is
Speaker 1: in a way of looking at the world to check
Speaker 1: and see if the idea is right, you should look
Speaker 1: and check. So. Galileo is best known today for landing
Speaker 1: a fatal blow against the theory of geocentrism. Under classic
Speaker 1: geocentric cosmology, the Earth was the center of the universe,
Speaker 1: and the Moon and the Sun and all the planets
Speaker 1: orbited around the Earth. Now again, today, we know that
Speaker 1: the Earth rotates, which is why the sky seems to
Speaker 1: spin around the Earth. But the Earth feels pretty solid,
Speaker 1: doesn't it, right, It doesn't feel like it's moving, and
Speaker 1: we can watch the sky moving all around us. So
Speaker 1: if you had to, how would you actually prove that
Speaker 1: objects in the sky didn't orbit the Earth. Well, part
Speaker 1: of it is, of course, observe if you get to
Speaker 1: the point where you're tracking these objects that are presumably
Speaker 1: moving around the Earth, and then you begin to notice
Speaker 1: that they don't really behave like objects that are that
Speaker 1: are orbiting around something you know well, right, and that
Speaker 1: had been known for a long time, right, you know,
Speaker 1: you'd see that the planets, don't they the planets don't
Speaker 1: seem to perfectly go around the Earth in a in
Speaker 1: a steady pattern. It's kind of odd, isn't it. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like closer inspection of this model of the cosmos ultimately
Speaker 1: ended up showing all these problems and the you know,
Speaker 1: the clearly showed that that our understanding was not perfect.
Speaker 1: Something was wrong with this model, right. So Galileo did
Speaker 1: not invent the theory of helio centrism, which is the
Speaker 1: idea that the Sun is the gravitational center of the
Speaker 1: Solar system. He did not come up with that. Other
Speaker 1: thinkers had already proposed this idea for various reasons, notably
Speaker 1: the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus in uh in I believe
Speaker 1: fifteen forty three or in the fifteen forties. He lived
Speaker 1: fourteen seventy three to fifteen forty three. But Copernican heliocentrism,
Speaker 1: while it had its defenders, had not been accepted by
Speaker 1: the cat like Church, had not been accepted by the
Speaker 1: all the academic authorities of the day. I think the
Speaker 1: reigning expert opinion still viewed the universe much the way
Speaker 1: Aristotle did, with an earth centered solar system, with special
Speaker 1: types of motion for the objects in the heavens, with
Speaker 1: celestial spheres that held up the planets as they orbited
Speaker 1: the Earth out in space. So at the age of
Speaker 1: twenty seven, Galileo was appointed a professor of mathematics at
Speaker 1: the University of Padua, and he would go on to
Speaker 1: challenge many of the strains of thinking about physics and
Speaker 1: astronomy that have been dominant in European history. Often these
Speaker 1: beliefs passed on by Aristotle. So one example of the
Speaker 1: way he challenged these things was his important discoveries in
Speaker 1: the physics of motion and inertia. I think just in
Speaker 1: the past year, Robert we did an episode of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind where we talked about Galileo's thought
Speaker 1: experiment about the falling bodies, you know, where he was
Speaker 1: identifying the idea that the rate of acceleration for falling
Speaker 1: objects is actually the same between lighter objects and heavier objects,
Speaker 1: except for the influence of air resistance. But another question
Speaker 1: that's interesting about inertia that was addressed by Galileo is
Speaker 1: the idea of um, how do you tell how would
Speaker 1: you tell if the Earth was rotating? If you're on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth and it's spinning. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're sort of a shoot from the hip seventeenth century
Speaker 1: conventional physicist. You want to argue it's obvious the Earth
Speaker 1: doesn't rotate because if you throw a ball straight up
Speaker 1: in the air and the Earth were rotating, the ball
Speaker 1: should land west of where you tossed it from right,
Speaker 1: because the Earth should continue to rotate under it while
Speaker 1: the ball is up at the air right and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a like a carnival ride. Um understanding
Speaker 1: of how the earth rotation would work. But Galileo has
Speaker 1: got a good answer for this. It doesn't fall away
Speaker 1: from you if the ball and the Earth and the
Speaker 1: atmosphere are all moving together at the same rate in
Speaker 1: the same direction. This is a crucial bit of reasoning
Speaker 1: about inertial reference frames. In the world of motion. Difference
Speaker 1: means acceleration. If there are a group of objects all
Speaker 1: moving in the same direction at the same speed, they
Speaker 1: might as well be standing still with reference to each other.
Speaker 1: It's only when the speed or the direction changes in
Speaker 1: the motion that we notice the difference. So you throw
Speaker 1: a ball straight up in the air on a rotating earth,
Speaker 1: it's actually like throwing a ball straight up in the
Speaker 1: air inside an airplane. Right. If you were able to
Speaker 1: like take a cross section of the airplane and look
Speaker 1: at the path of the ball, and you were standing
Speaker 1: still just looking at it passed by, the ball would
Speaker 1: go in an arc right, because it would go up
Speaker 1: from the person's hand. But also everything in the plane,
Speaker 1: including the ball, is going horizontally. You don't throw the
Speaker 1: ball up in the airplane, first of all, don't throw
Speaker 1: balls in the airplane. But if you throw a ball
Speaker 1: up in the airplane, it's not going to just go flying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, straight back through the through the plane and
Speaker 1: then smack into the door of the toilet exactly because
Speaker 1: the airplane, the air inside the airplane, and the ball
Speaker 1: and the person throwing it are all within the same
Speaker 1: reference frame of horizontal motion. They're all traveling at the
Speaker 1: same speed in the same direction. So relative to the
Speaker 1: person in the plane, the ball just goes up and down.
Speaker 1: And the same thing happens on Earth's surface. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you were looking out from space, a ball thrown
Speaker 1: straight up from the Earth's surface actually does go in
Speaker 1: an arc, but relative to the person standing there who
Speaker 1: threw it up, who's moving at the same speed, and
Speaker 1: the around the around the center of rotation of the Earth,
Speaker 1: it just goes straight up and down. So so, and
Speaker 1: that's the realm of like physics and inertia, in which
Speaker 1: Galileo was very influential and very important. But Galileo also
Speaker 1: found out about the invention of the telescope in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: and he almost immediately had the insight to turn the
Speaker 1: magnification power of the telescope to the night sky. And
Speaker 1: he also, using his engineering skills, he made improvements to
Speaker 1: the design of the primordial telescope to increase its power.
Speaker 1: He eventually, I think it within just a couple of month,
Speaker 1: he had scaled it up to twenty times magnification. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I guess we should discuss a couple of the examples
Speaker 1: of what Galileo saw when he looks through the telescope
Speaker 1: and how it provided evidence that changed the dominant strains
Speaker 1: of thinking about the universe. Now. One of his first
Speaker 1: observations was the moon. Yeah, I mean, what that's that's
Speaker 1: gonna be the first thing you're gonna look at. No
Speaker 1: better than to look at the sun. But there's the moon.
Speaker 1: Let's take a closer look. I mean, what's there to
Speaker 1: learn about the moon? We can all see the moon
Speaker 1: right like, the moon's right there. It just seems like,
Speaker 1: what what should you be able to learn about the moon?
Speaker 1: That would be revolutionary by looking at it in a
Speaker 1: magnified way. But I thought this was really interesting. So
Speaker 1: in December of sixteen o nine he observed the moon
Speaker 1: through the telescope. And of course humans have been gazing
Speaker 1: at the Moon at night for a long time, but
Speaker 1: a common belief in the geocentric cosmology of the time
Speaker 1: was that the moon and other objects above the lunar sphere.
Speaker 1: This was a you know, a designation of a certain
Speaker 1: area around the Earth in the heavens, that the stuff
Speaker 1: in the lunar sphere and above it was perfect, which
Speaker 1: would mean perfectly smooth, sort of featureless heavenly spheres. So well,
Speaker 1: we could see patterns of changes in the coloration of
Speaker 1: the Moon from the Earth. With the naked eye, many
Speaker 1: imagine the Moon to be sort of like a heavenly
Speaker 1: ball bearing. But what did Galileo see when he looked
Speaker 1: at the moon? Well, specifically, he made observations of the
Speaker 1: terminator line. This is the division between day and night
Speaker 1: on a partially illuminated moon. So you're seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the moon is lit up by the sun
Speaker 1: and part of it as the nighttime part of the moon,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing that horizon of sunrise or sunset from
Speaker 1: the Earth. If you've ever looked at this, what is
Speaker 1: the line like, Well, of course it's jagged, and that's
Speaker 1: it's jagged because the surface of the Moon is textured
Speaker 1: with mountains and valleys and craters of different elevations which
Speaker 1: catch the light of the sunrise or the sunset differently
Speaker 1: and cast longer or shorter shadows. The surface of the
Speaker 1: Moon was a terrain like the surface of the Earth,
Speaker 1: making it seem like maybe the Moon and the Earth
Speaker 1: are not actually special examples of fundamentally different universal essences
Speaker 1: or spheres of being, but instead are similar chunks of
Speaker 1: matter obeying the same physical laws. So in other words,
Speaker 1: it was almost almost like we've discussed on at least
Speaker 1: on stuff to blow your mind, like you know, older
Speaker 1: models of the Moon as being like some sort of
Speaker 1: a mirror like object or certainly here like a holy
Speaker 1: ball bearing. And basically he's looking at the Moon and
Speaker 1: seeing that the Moon is at least earth like on
Speaker 1: the surface. Like it is. It is earthlike in a
Speaker 1: not in the sense that it has trees or lie
Speaker 1: or canals or anything, but is it the very least
Speaker 1: like it's it seems to be made of a sort
Speaker 1: of dirt or rock. It is land. Yeah, it has terrain,
Speaker 1: it has mountains, it as craters, there's stuff going on there.
Speaker 1: Uh So that meant, yeah, that's an interesting point of analogy.
Speaker 1: Then I think the really big observation came with Jupiter.
Speaker 1: So this would have been I guess just like a
Speaker 1: month later in January of six ten, Galileo was making
Speaker 1: observations of Jupiter. And to be perfectly clear, Galileo did
Speaker 1: not discover Jupiter. We mentioned earlier that you know, the
Speaker 1: planets up to Uranus had been known about for a
Speaker 1: long time. They could be seen with the naked eye.
Speaker 1: Jupiter's bright enough to see with the naked eye under
Speaker 1: the right conditions as a point of light. So people
Speaker 1: would have known about Jupiter since ancient times. What made
Speaker 1: Galileo's observations of Jupiter special was that when viewed through
Speaker 1: his upgraded telescope, Jupiter's sort of single point of light
Speaker 1: became four points of light, bringing us back to the moons. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so he saw he saw these points of light in
Speaker 1: a straight line alongside Jupiter, like as if mounted on
Speaker 1: a rod going through the equator of the greater planet.
Speaker 1: So first he made a note and decided, Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess maybe these are stars, but I'll come back and
Speaker 1: check later. And if they were background stars, by the
Speaker 1: time he came back to check again later, they should
Speaker 1: have moved along with the rest of the background starfield,
Speaker 1: you know, because Jupiter would be closer and it's moving along, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, independent of the stars. But instead he found
Speaker 1: that these other stars stuck to Jupiter like glue, and
Speaker 1: that also they moved, They moved back and forth as
Speaker 1: if along this rod, stringing them to the planet. And
Speaker 1: later he discovered that there was a fourth star in
Speaker 1: in this line along with Jupiter, in addition to the
Speaker 1: three had already seen this naturally suggested a radical conclusion,
Speaker 1: which is that Jupiter has satellites, and we now know these, Yes,
Speaker 1: the Galilean moons of Jupiter. We did a whole episode
Speaker 1: of stuff to blow your mind about them. It's io Ganymede,
Speaker 1: Europa and Callisto, and these are moons. But what was
Speaker 1: undeniable at the time was that this other planet had
Speaker 1: satellites orbiting it the same way that Earth did, the
Speaker 1: same way the Earth has a moon, Jupiter has moons.
Speaker 1: So if there were moons orbiting Jupiter, then it's really
Speaker 1: hard to keep swinging your sword for the cosmological uniqueness
Speaker 1: of Earth in the geocentric model. Like, it's clear evidence
Speaker 1: that there is at least one other center of motion
Speaker 1: in the universe, and it's Jupiter. And if Jupiter can
Speaker 1: be a center of motion, why can't the Sun be
Speaker 1: a center of motion? Right? It ultimately ends up simplifying
Speaker 1: your attempts to get a grasp on, you know, the
Speaker 1: celestial mechanics of your immediate neighborhood. Yeah. Now, like with
Speaker 1: the invention of the telescope, the credit for the discovery
Speaker 1: of the moons of Jupiter, I think is also somewhat
Speaker 1: historically disputed. I've read there's there's some attempts to credit
Speaker 1: the German astronomer Simon Marius, who I think has also
Speaker 1: been credited as maybe a sort of inventor of the telescope. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's also and suggested that the ancient Chinese astronomer
Speaker 1: Gone Day might have seen one of the moons of Jupiter,
Speaker 1: or seeing the moons of Jupiter when he described in
Speaker 1: the fourth century b c. E. Having seen a small
Speaker 1: object next to Jupiter. Uh. And and technically, I think
Speaker 1: if the conditions are just right, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: with seeing Uranus. Right, like, if it's just right, you
Speaker 1: might be able to make out the moons of Jupiter
Speaker 1: with the naked eye. But it's it's tough, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to do. But with the telescope it becomes predictable.
Speaker 1: You know that you can point the telescope at Jupiter
Speaker 1: and see these bodies. It's not like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: glimpsing something that may or may not be there. Of
Speaker 1: course that you know, that's still that becomes an issue
Speaker 1: with the telescope and astronomy in general. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: in the period to follow we've discussed that on our
Speaker 1: shows before as well. Yeah, yeah, and so Galileo's progress
Speaker 1: in astronomy and physics, I think it helped pave the
Speaker 1: way for the revolutionary work of other scientists like Isaac Newton,
Speaker 1: you know, who picked up the tour which of this
Speaker 1: idea of the uniformity of physical laws, showing that one
Speaker 1: thing Newton showed was the same physical laws that governed
Speaker 1: the path of a cannonball on Earth also governed the
Speaker 1: motions of the planets and the comets, right universal gravitation.
Speaker 1: That that's the big Newtonian breakthrough. There's no special physics
Speaker 1: or special essences for the heavens. It's just matter and
Speaker 1: energy obeying the same underlying laws of physics. And I
Speaker 1: think the telescope was what allowed the empirical observations that
Speaker 1: gave way to that way of seeing the world. It
Speaker 1: made it possible. The telescope showed us that up there
Speaker 1: was like down here, and it could be understood now.
Speaker 1: The telescope in the microscope are are like we said,
Speaker 1: are their twin technologies in many ways, and they have
Speaker 1: I think together lead to changes that have drastically changed
Speaker 1: our understanding of our place in the cosmos. Um I
Speaker 1: always come back to the wonderful documentary short The Powers
Speaker 1: of Ten by Charles and ray Eames from seven. It's great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's readily available on YouTube. So if you have
Speaker 1: not seen it, go watch it now. Uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: stop listening to this podcast, go watch Powers of Ten
Speaker 1: and come back, because says even today, you know, it
Speaker 1: effectively conveys the scale of the physical universe via orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude. And these technologies, the telescope and the microscope,
Speaker 1: they've enabled us to begin a journey both inward and outward.
Speaker 1: And while you know, we might have thought, you know,
Speaker 1: previously you could essentially like hold up at a telescope
Speaker 1: and you'd be able to, you know, glimpse the barricades
Speaker 1: of heaven, the limits of of the universe. But it's
Speaker 1: but what's been more amazing is that we've either the
Speaker 1: absence of those barriers are our inability to glimpse such
Speaker 1: limits on a cosmos that's utterly on a scale beyond
Speaker 1: anything we've evolved to comprehend. Modern astronomy is is entirely
Speaker 1: dependent though upon this technological logical step, the invention of
Speaker 1: the telescope. Now we've gone a long way, since the
Speaker 1: simple glass refraction telescope, which you know, bent light through
Speaker 1: a transparent medium. Even optical telescopes now that are just
Speaker 1: using visible light tend to be more on the basis
Speaker 1: of mirrors because it's easier to magnify more that way.
Speaker 1: It's a reflection instead of refraction. But there are also
Speaker 1: tons of other types of telescopes that aren't even looking
Speaker 1: at visible light anymore, right, I mean, you've got radio telescopes,
Speaker 1: X ray telescopes, gamma ray telescopes, cosmic ray telescopes. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a tremendous amount of human achievement in space exploration
Speaker 1: that you can lump under the legacy column for the telescope. Again,
Speaker 1: it's just really hard to overstate the importance of this invention.
Speaker 1: But then there are also a number of telescope based
Speaker 1: technologies and gadgets to consider that there may be a
Speaker 1: little more, you know, rooted in terrestrial existence. Considered the sextant,
Speaker 1: for example, which depends on a telescope and enabled navigators
Speaker 1: to measure the angle between an astronomical object and the horizon,
Speaker 1: a key for celestial navigation and see. Another is the theodolite. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is an optical instrument that is used to measure
Speaker 1: angles between points. And you've all seen this before, uh
Speaker 1: probably driving around watching surveyors at work. Is used in surveying,
Speaker 1: is used in construction, also used in meteorology and rocketry.
Speaker 1: But it would not be possible without basic telescope technology
Speaker 1: and uh on. On a much lesser note, or maybe
Speaker 1: not a lesser note, the telescope is also a predecessor
Speaker 1: to the kaleidoscope, which you know, it's a fun get
Speaker 1: that I actually would wouldn't mind doing a whole episode on.
Speaker 1: But it was invented in the early nineteenth century by
Speaker 1: the Scottish scientist David Brewster, a noted optics expert himself,
Speaker 1: who also invented and improved uh stereoscope, you know, stereo
Speaker 1: viewers and uh and also a binocular camera and other
Speaker 1: optical inventions. Uh yeah. Once you start going down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole of looking at like improvements and an optical
Speaker 1: technology and new optical technology innovations and inventions, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it really gets gets fascinated. Yeah yeah, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: the telescope. I think it would not be wrong to
Speaker 1: say that it changed the world. I don't want to
Speaker 1: put everything on the telescope and not say and say
Speaker 1: that there were not other influences. But I think the
Speaker 1: telescope was one of the most important things that led
Speaker 1: to this change in our way of thinking about the universe,
Speaker 1: that said, uh, you know that that phenomena everywhere can
Speaker 1: be understood by appealing to universal laws and not necessarily
Speaker 1: like special circumstances that that can't be understood from our
Speaker 1: point of view. Right, Yeah, And and again it's it's
Speaker 1: such a fascinating one too, because it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: situation where like, you know, all the elements were there
Speaker 1: all you know, the technology was available, and then it's
Speaker 1: you know, looking back in retrospect, you know, we we
Speaker 1: can we can look at the timeline and say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, who's gonna do it? Why? Why have they
Speaker 1: not invented it yet? Why is the telescope not changing
Speaker 1: the world yet? And then the moment occurs, and uh,
Speaker 1: and the world changes. We already mentioned this, but I
Speaker 1: am very interested in in actually going backward in this
Speaker 1: story to some time in the future, come back to
Speaker 1: earlier moments of breakthroughs in optics and refraction lenses, the
Speaker 1: creation of spectacles, for example, spectacles is a key one.
Speaker 1: Now we have done a previous episode on sunglasses. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: which gets a little bit into the the into the
Speaker 1: spectacles area, but not completely. Oh, I should have mentioned this.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I forgot when we're talking about Giovanni
Speaker 1: Della Giovanni Batista della Porta. Uh, he apparently proposed some
Speaker 1: changes I think to the camera obscura. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he was the first person to do this, but
Speaker 1: I think he proposed a camera obscura with a lens
Speaker 1: on it as opposed to just depenhole. Basically, what we're
Speaker 1: saying is it eventually on Invention we will cover the
Speaker 1: complete history of optical technology because there's a lot. There's
Speaker 1: a lot kind of Again, it comes back to what
Speaker 1: we are and such. We're such highly visual creatures that
Speaker 1: optical technology is of course groundbreaking. It is of course
Speaker 1: world changing, be it the way the motion picture changed
Speaker 1: the world or the way that the telescope change the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm also feeling a little bit of regret that we maybe,
Speaker 1: maybe in this episode we went too far with the
Speaker 1: egg based cryptography and and barred ourselves the opportunity to
Speaker 1: do a whole episode on egg based cryptography in the future.
Speaker 1: I don't know, there could be more. I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is my my introduction to egg based cryptography. So well,
Speaker 1: perhaps there's there's a whole episode's worth of additional data
Speaker 1: out there we should consider. We're just egg technology in general, right,
Speaker 1: Who invented that wire slicer thing for your hard boiled eggs? Oh?
Speaker 1: You know this is actually you bringing this up. Unitaskers
Speaker 1: is the term that sometimes use for kitchen devices like
Speaker 1: this Brown. I don't know if, but he uses it
Speaker 1: all the time. He loathes unitaskers. Uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: depends on the un task or some of them. I love.
Speaker 1: But I would actually love to do an episode where
Speaker 1: we just look at different unitasker devices, you know, because
Speaker 1: those are kind of like the ultimate and invention right
Speaker 1: where you have you've, you've you've come up with with
Speaker 1: with this device that doesn't really change the world. What
Speaker 1: changes the world in very small and specific ways, such
Speaker 1: as cutting down the time it takes to slice a
Speaker 1: boiled egg into several pieces, not just cutting down the time,
Speaker 1: also ensuring regularity in the word of slices. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: also generally against unitaskers, but there are a few I
Speaker 1: can probably think of that I get into every time
Speaker 1: I use a spatula, I I wonder, like, what is
Speaker 1: the like the full history of the spatulate? How did
Speaker 1: we get to this point? And then I forget to
Speaker 1: look into it afterwards. No, yeah, the differences the history
Speaker 1: of cooking culture is really interesting, like like using chopsticks
Speaker 1: to cook versus using them to eat. You know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was previous episode of Invention. All right, So as
Speaker 1: as you can tell, we're open to all manner of
Speaker 1: subjects here on Invention, and we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you if you have any particular request. If there's
Speaker 1: a UNI tasker out there, uh, you know that we should,
Speaker 1: you know, give due diligence on the show. Let us
Speaker 1: know we would love to hear from you. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Invention,
Speaker 1: head on over to invention pod dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: we'll find them all. And remember, the most important thing
Speaker 1: you can do to support this show and ensure we
Speaker 1: keep delivering it to you is to make sure you
Speaker 1: have subscribed to it somewhere and then make sure that
Speaker 1: you have left or review uh and a rating if
Speaker 1: that is at all possible. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hi, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact dot invention pod dot com. Invention is production
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