LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



from all over the world to hear Galileo's lectures. 

 Starting with a common class-room, the audience in- 

 creased so that a special auditorium was required that 

 would seat two thousand persons. It was during this 

 time that Galileo invented the proportional compasses, 

 an instrument now everywhere in use, without the 

 slightest change having been made in it. 

 He also invented the thermometer ; but greatest, best 

 and most -wonderful of all, he produced an instrument 

 through which he could view the stars, and see them 

 much magnified. With this instrument, he saw heav- 

 enly bodies that had never been seen before ; he be- 

 held that Jupiter had satellites which moved in orbits, 

 and that Venus revolved, showing different sides at 

 different times, thus proving that which Copernicus 

 declared was true, but which, for lack of apparatus, he 

 could not prove. 



Galileo Galilei was getting to be something more than 

 a professor of mathematics he was becoming a world- 

 power. The lever of his mind was finding a fulcrum. 



[HE year 1609 is forever fixed in history, 

 through the fact that in that year Galileo 

 invented the telescope. 

 Every good thing is an evolution. " Specil- 

 lum," or helps to read, had been made, 

 and sold privately and mysteriously, as 

 early as the year 1400. These first magnifying glasses 

 were associated with magic, or wonder-working; the 

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