Lot 18: BOREL, Pierre (c.1620-1671). De vero telescopii inventore... Accessit etiam

BOREL, Pierre (c.1620-1671). De vero telescopii inventore... Accessit etiam centuria observationum microcospicarum. The Hague:
Adrian Vlacq, 1655. 3 parts in one volume, 4° (205 x 151mm). 2 engraved portraits of Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lipperhey by J. van Meurs
after Berckman, one folding engraved plate and one half-page engraved illustration, several woodcuts in text, including
one of a telescope, Centuria with separate title, woodcut initials and headpieces. (Lacking errata at end, lightly waterstained,
stronger at beginning and end, light browning at beginning.) Contemporary vellum (rubbed, lightly soiled, spine with two
small holes). Provenance: unidentifed bookplate (pastedown) — partly erased inscription on title.
first edition. ‘Borel’s work is remarkable on two counts: it was the frst documentary history of the invention of the
telescope and microscope, and it contained Christiaan Huygens’s preliminary announcement in anagram form of his
discovery of the rings of Saturn and of the Saturnian moon Titan’ (Norman). In this work, Borel presents evidence to show
that Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lipperhey, both spectacle-makers in Middelburg, Holland, were the frst inventors of the
telescope, in that order. He gives a detailed history of the telescope from the earliest times up to Galileo, Descartes, Metius
and numerous others. The second part of the book is devoted to microscopic observations. It also gives a full account of
the construction of telescopes and microscopes and their lenses. Carli and Favaro 54; Cinti 254; Garrison and Morton 261;
Graesse I, p.495; Norman 268; Wellcome II, p.204.