Venetian Technology Transfer: How Galileo Copied the Telescope

Venetian Technology Transfer: How Galileo Copied the Telescope
-

This is a past event

Join Professor Mario Biagioli from Harvard Universirty to gain an insight into the obvious links between Galileo’s name and the telescope.

As obvious as the link between Galileo’s name and the telescope may be today, it is the result of strategic historical narratives initiated by Galileo himself. By the time he started to develop his instrument in Padua in the summer of 1609, telescopes built by different artisans were common throughout Europe. Even Galileo (who was not best known for his modesty) acknowledged that others had produced telescopes before he did. Still, he claimed to have invented his telescope without copying anybody’s example, but by relying on ‘the science of refraction’. His instrument, Galileo intimated, was different from all others because of the way it had been invented and because of the unprecedented astronomical discoveries it made possible. But new evidence indicates that there may have been substantially less independent invention and more ‘technology transfer’ than Galileo cared to admit.

Admission free and all welcome.