|
Galileo's Telescopes: To Date These Are The
Worlds Finest Museum Quality
Replicas
Made on Order by Jim & Rhoda Morris
|
|
Our Replica of Galileo's Telescope IMSS
INV
#2428.
Florence Italy. Now on display at Griffith Observatory California ![]() Replication of IMSS #2428 |
Introduction We have replicated, with great care, Galileo's two internationally famous telescopes. We built these replicas using measurements we made and collected from the two originals on display at the IMSS museum in Florence, Italy and from information published in the literature. We constructed the telescope on the left, IMSS INV # 2428, for the Griffith Observatory’s opening of their new exhibition wing in 2006. It is complete to the smallest detail: the delicate gold embossed decorations precisely reconstructed from our photographs of the original, the leather covering, the original coloring, its very unusual wood thin-stave construction, its odd focal length objective lens – all construction details that have not been done before or to the same level of precision. We constructed INV # 2427, pictured on the right, for the Adler Planetarium. It re-creates the equally interesting laboratory type telescope and the only other known telescope ascribed to Galileo. Its main barrel consists of a split wood tube covered with paper, painted, and reinforced with copper wire bands along its full length. We took great care with both
telescopes reproducing each part of the instruments
as close as possible to the originals. Each
telescope was
assembled by hand as they were in Galileo's day.
Our dimensional accuracy has been kept to within a
few percent in all cases and in some instances
to fractions of a millimeter of the originals. We
also chose not to antique them but to show them as
they would have looked when new. We have built other Galileo instruments and were aware of his life and his work. But in researching his ventures into developing and using the telescope, we have come to see Galileo’s saga and his telescopes as remarkable and timeless examples of what the business of science is all about and how science really works. Galileo and his instruments are an excellent case study of the working of science and basic research – the contributions they make to our knowledge and the fragile threads that supports them. The telescopes demonstrate that the processes used by science ensure the truth will be revealed no matter how strong the bias. When discoveries are suppressed it is only a matter of time before they come to light again. When errors are made, science’s self correcting processes will reveal them. Its output has testable reliability. These processes of science are not unique to science but they should become more universal. Since our replicas are so accurately reproduced they are particularly useful as research, teaching, and display tools. One can see, feel, and operate them as Galileo saw, felt and operated them. This tactile experience high lights in a very real way their virtues and their faults and offer a more mature insight into 1609 telescope making and operation in a way that Galileo, his associates and customers would have experienced. For those with the professional interest: we will be making a few of these very precise museum grade replicas for museums, serious collectors and those who so kindly donate instruments of this quality to their favorite museums and other teaching institutions. If you are interested, please contact us at k1ugm@comcast.net For further information on our
data gathering process and construction details,
please go to the following links:
|
Our Replica of Galileo's Telescope
IMSS
INV#2427
Florence
Italy. Now at Adler Planetarium Chicago Illinois ![]() Replication of IMSS #2427 |
||||||||||||||
|
![]() |
![]() |
| Dr. Giorgio Strano - Curator at the IMSS (where the original telescopes are kept) looking out over Florence's roof tops from the top of the IMSS with our precisely made replica of IMSS 2428 much as Galileo Galilei might have done with one of his instruments some 400 years ago. | Michelle
Nichols Master Educator at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
in Chicago Illinois checking out Adler's new replica of
Galileo's telescope
IMSS 2427 we built to the
precise specifications of Galileo's original telescope. |
Copyright 04/18/2007 Jim & Rhoda Morris