Lot 240: BOREL, Pierre (c.1620-1671). De vero telescopii inventore, cum brevi omnium conspiciliorum historia ... Accessit etiam centuria observationum microcospicarum . The Hague: Adrian Vlacq, 1655.

BOREL, Pierre (c.1620-1671). De vero telescopii inventore, cum brevi omnium conspiciliorum historia ... Accessit etiam centuria observationum microcospicarum. The Hague: Adrian Vlacq, 1655.

Three parts in one volume, 4° (215 x 165mm). 2 fine engraved portraits of Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lipperhey by J. van Meurs after Berckman, one folding full-page and one half-page copper-engraving, several woodcuts in text, one showing a telescope, independent title to Centuria. (Occasional light browning and spotting.) Later limp card wrappers, title in manuscript to spine (upper joint cracked, some loss to spine).

FIRST EDITION. 'Borel's work is remarkable on two counts: it was the first 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 first 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-Favaro 54 (245); Cinti 254 (130); De Caro 49; DSB II 305; Garrison-Morton 261; Norman I 98 (268); Wellcome II 204.

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