Museo Galileo
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Telescope for Torricelli's lens
    • Setting:
      Room IX
    • Maker:
      Evangelista Torricelli (Objective) / Tube: maker unknown
    • Date:
      Objective: 1647 / Tube: second half 18th cent. (?)
    • Materials:
      brass
    • Dimensions:
      length 1115 mm
    • Inventory:
      2554
    • Telescope for Torricelli's lens (Inv. 2554)
    • Telescope for Torricelli's lens (Inv. 2554)

Telescope with a single brass tube, made from two tubes soldered together. There is a wooden diaphragm about halfway along the tube. The biconvex objective by Evangelista Torricelli is inserted in a cardboard ring bearing the inscription "V. Torr. in Fior. 1647. Br 1 3/4," i.e., a focal length of 1.75 braccia [1,022 mm]. The eyepiece is plano-convex, with a focal length of 32 mm. The glass quality of the two lenses is very different: the objective, typical of the first half of the seventeenth century, has a slight yellow tint and contains many small bubbles and inclusions; the eyepiece glass, certainly of later date, is clear and homogeneous. The instrument's magnification is 32. First mentioned in the 1776 inventory of the Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale, it was probably made in the second half of the eighteenth century to house the Torricelli objective.