Awards

• Nominated for Rachel Carson Prize & Ludwik Fleck Prize 2009

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Reeves's splendid account is a cultural and social history that sets Galileo's telescope in the rich landscape of optical science from the Middle Ages to the modern period. -- Simon Mitton Times Higher Education Supplement (05/22/2008)

Eileen Reeves' book provides us with a significant effort for a better understanding of the cultural features involved in the making of the telescope. Highly original and innovative, Galileo's Glassworks paves the way for further inquiries that will deepen our knowledge of the relationship between well-established cultural models and technological innovations.--Michele Camerota, Professor Of The History Of Science At The University Of Cagliari

Reeves's splendid account is a cultural and social history that sets Galileo's telescope in the rich landscape of optical science from the Middle Ages to the modern period.--Simon Mitton Times Higher Education Supplement (05/22/2008) Fascinating... Eileen Reeves shows just how tangled with myth and legend the history of the telescope, and Galileo's pioneering use of it, actually was... Ms. Reeves recounts this complicated history with great flair. She is more interested in the missteps and the stumbles that accompanied momentous discoveries than in their scientific significance, and rightly so. The tale of Galileo's telescope is, as it turns out, an intensely human one. Sometimes, amid the intrigue and the campaigns of slander and distortion which surrounded Galileo's discoveries, it seems as if the chief obstacle to a clear-sighted gaze at the heavens lay not in better optics but in piercing dense clouds of misconception. As Ms. Reeves shows, Galileo was no isolated genius; he built on the scattered findings of his predecessors. To certain contemporaries, he appeared as a modern Prometheus, but he was also a shrewd operator, as ambitious as he was inquisitive. There was something both sublime and stubborn in his nosiness, yet in the end it led him to the stars.-- (03/12/2008) Scattered with intriguing nuggets.--Kirkus Reviews (11/15/2007) In Galileo's time, [Reeves] reports, many scientists and amateurs were experimenting with optics and purloining each other's results in a complex game of cross-national thievery. Reeves's study is a skillful interpretative blend of legend, history and science about lenses, mirrors and their conjoining in the telescope.-- (10/15/2007) The telescope was 'invented' in 1608. But what about the events leading up to it? Galileo and his contemporaries were searching for a device with which 'from an incredible distance we might read the smallest letters.' Eileen Reeves tells a story of 'cultural optics' magical mirrors and political intrigue, and investigators looking for magnifying power in all the wrong places, while the solution lay in the humble spectacle lenses on their noses. An excellent read, and an important contribution to the history of science.--Albert van Helden, Lynette S. Autrey Professor of History, Rice University Eileen Reeves's book provides us with a significant effort for a better understanding of the cultural features involved in the making of the telescope. Highly original and innovative, Galileo's Glassworks paves the way for further inquiries that will deepen our knowledge of the relationship between well-established cultural models and technological innovations.--Michele Camerota, Professor of the History of Science, University of Cagliari

A survey of Renaissance lore regarding magnifying mirrors and lenses.Reeves (Comparative Literature/Princeton Univ.) is more interested in what Galileo and his contemporaries believed about telescopic vision than in the actual process of discovery that led to his adoption of the telescope for astronomical observations. As the author shows, the idea of telescopic vision can be traced to ancient civilizations. The Pharos lighthouse in Alexandria was said to have a mirror in which the keepers could see the enemies of the city approaching from long distances. The Pharos mirror was also supposedly capable of setting ships ablaze by concentrating the sun's rays. It was variously described as magical and simply physical, and many of its properties, notes Reeves, can be found in descriptions of other semi-mythical mirrors, built by (or for) many powerful historical figures including Julius Caesar, Virgil, Roger Bacon and John Dee. The author quotes a number of Galileo's contemporaries or immediate predecessors who claim they had made - or were working on - mirrors with similar properties, sometimes in combination with lenses. This flood of information - some of it merely mistaken, some outright fraudulent - is largely responsible for Galileo's delay in following up accounts of the real telescope developed by Dutch lensmakers. Reeves also argues that obscure language in several texts led Galileo and his contemporaries to believe that the Dutch telescope used mirrors, not lenses, to achieve its effect. In fact, a confusion of reports, some by Galileo's rivals, has obscured the exact history of Galileo's own adoption of the telescope. A satire by Ben Jonson, for example, improbably portrays the Italian astronomer as an ally of the Jesuits, using his telescope to burn attacking ships.A bit dry, but scattered with intriguing nuggets. (Kirkus Reviews)

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Eileen Reeves is Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

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