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Galileo's Discoveries, 400 Years Later, Still Open Eyes

Submitted by medici on Sat, 04/11/2009 - 15:50
Robert Lee Hotz
The Wall Street Journal/Science Journal
April 9, 2009
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PHILADELPHIA -- In the hands of Galileo, the telescope now on display at the Franklin Institute here was an instrument of revolution. Stained with use like a worn pick handle, this tool moved the planets, overturned empires of faith and forever altered our sense of place in the cosmos.

The Cosmos, Surveyed

Submitted by medici on Fri, 04/03/2009 - 13:54
Edward Rothstein
The New York Times
April 3, 2009
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PHILADELPHIA — The shabby-looking tube of wood and varnished paper diagonally mounted in a case is meant to be the climactic object of "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy,” an important exhibition that opens at the Franklin Institute on Saturday. And it is certainly astonishing, though not in the way you might imagine. Its importance is the inverse of its appearance. The tube looks as if it was constructed out of the inner part of a huge roll of paper towels, but it is one of two surviving telescopes Galileo used in Florence in the 17th century, when he reshaped the cosmos with meticulous observations and startling interpretations. Those astronomical investigations are now being honored with international celebrations on their 400th anniversary.

Courtship of the Spyglass

Submitted by medici on Fri, 04/03/2009 - 14:11
Christopher Yasiejko
The Philadelphia Inquirer
April 2, 2009
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The Italian museum's director pulled out a stack of letters and, one by one, laid them atop his desk at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence.

It was late 2007 and appeals were pouring in from museums in China, Korea, Germany, New York, Chicago, and a host of cities around the globe, though the International Year of Astronomy was still more than a year away.

"Tutti vogliono il mio telescopio," Paolo Galluzzi said. "Everyone wants my telescope," the only remaining functional telescope made by Galileo Galilei, whom Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics - indeed, of modern science altogether."

Martha McGeary Snider, a Philadelphia philanthropist and board chair of the Medici Archive Project, was in Florence that day, scanning the letter-cloaked desktop.

A Telescope to the Past as Galileo Visits U.S.

Submitted by medici on Tue, 04/07/2009 - 09:11
Dennis Overbye
The New York Times
March 27, 2009
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PHILADELPHIA — It looked like the kind of toy telescope a child might have made with scissors and tape — a lumpy, mottled tube about as long as a golf club and barely wider in girth, the color of 400-year-old cardboard, burning with age.

But near one knobby end was a bit of writing that sent Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer of the Franklin Institute here, into rapture. The tube’s focal length is “piedi 3,” the inscription said, three feet. It was in the hand of Galileo Galilei. “Absolutely amazing,” Dr. Pitts said.

Thus did Galileo, one of history’s great troublemakers, come to America.