Marvin Bolt, the curator of Corning Museum of Glass, is documenting the oldest telescopes of the world.
Bolt suggests that he is in the process of tracking down old telescopes ever known to man, dating back to the 1600s.
The first telescope was discovered by Hans Lippershey in 1608. However, many scientists made improvements to the telescope in the later years. Johannes Kepler and Galileo are some of the well-known astronomers who made significant improvements to the telescope.
Bolt suggests that he has a lot of work to do in cataloging the oldest telescopes. So far Bolt has tracked some old telescopes in private collections, as well as in museums across the Europe. He is also trying to trace old telescopes in North America and in Asia. So far, telescope hunting has taken Bolt to 21 countries across the world.
Bolt worked as a curator at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. However, he left for the Corning Museum in 2013 and since then has documented over 1,000 telescopes that were made prior to 1750. Bolt's work is funded by grants received from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.
When Bolt started the project, only about 10 telescopes from 1608 to 1650 were known to exist. However, Bolt revealed that he has documented about 30 telescopes dating to that time.
Bolt discovered one of the 400-year-old telescopes in a museum in Germany amidst collection of scientist instruments and keyboards. Bolt and his colleagues started to look for old telescopes in similar displays and found a telescope dating back to 1620 just the next day.
"Sure enough we found one which dates to about 1620. It's one of the oldest ones in the world," says Bolt.
The curator revealed that he found another 17th century telescope lying on top of a dusty shelf in a Belgian antique shop. Bolt has found telescopes made of paper, leather, wood, metal, ivory and more.
Bolt suggests that there are about 300 to 400 old telescopes dating prior to 1750 yet to be discovered. Finding older telescope dating back to the period will help understanding how telescopes evolved.
Bolt takes images of the old telescopes, records relevant information and the view from the telescopes and left them where they were found. The information about old telescopes will soon be available on an online public database.
Photo: Ryan Wick | Flickr
