CHAPTEK VII 



THE GREAT TELESCOPE 



THERE is reason to believe that the discoverer of the 

 telescope was Roger Bacon, who in the thirteenth 

 century also invented gunpowder, and was rewarded 

 with the curses of the Church, the reproaches of his 

 fellow-friars, and the terror of the ignorant as a 

 wonder-worker by the aid of evil arts. His discovery 

 of how to see to a greater distance than the eye can 

 reach, was a seed that died in the ground, and did not 

 come to life again till the world was more than three 

 centuries older. A spectacle-maker of Leyden, Lipper- 

 shey, working among lenses, as the glasses of spectacles 

 are called, chanced to place two of them so that, in 

 looking through, he saw a distant church spire as if it 

 were close at hand. He made the story public in 

 1609. Galileo, who happened to be then in Venice, 

 between which and Holland the East India traffic still 

 continued, and gave rise to a considerable commerce, 

 heard the story, probably from some merchant, and, 

 instead of turning it into ridicule as many would have 

 done, set himself to find out if he could not do what a 

 humble spectacle-maker on the other side of Europe 

 had already done. He was successful. He brought 

 the moon and the planets so much nearer to the earth 

 that astronomy took its place among the sciences. 



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