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One man's quest to find telescopes from days of Galileo

The Associated Press

March 29, 2015 at 12:50AM

Unknown: A 5-inch-long telescope from the collection of Marvin Bolt, who is on a quest to track the oldest telescopes from the days of Galileo. All photos were provided by the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

You could say Marvin Bolt takes the long view.

He's on a worldwide quest to track down and catalog the oldest telescopes known to man, dating to the early 1600s and the days of Galileo.

"You'd think after 400 years, people would know where they are," said Bolt, the science and technology curator at the Corning Museum of Glass.

So far, he has traced relics to private collections and museums throughout Europe, where the hand-held instruments first opened astronomers' eyes to moons and planets and served as military surveillance tools.

The hunt has taken him to 21 countries, including China, Portugal, Estonia and the Vatican.

"We have to make a systematic study of actual objects: Where are they? How many are there and what can you actually see through them?"

Backed by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, Bolt has since cataloged more than 1,000 telescopes made before 1750, when the addition of a second piece of glass to the lens improved the quality and led to a production surge.

Circa 1670: A 5-foot-long telescope made by Philippe-Claude LeBas, the optician to French King Louis IV. Dating back to around 1670, the instrument is constructed of paper covered with Moroccan leather. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Circa 1630: A 2½-foot-long telescope. Fewer than 10 telescopes from the earliest days, from 1608 to 1650, were known to exist at the start of the project. That number is now up to about 30. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Circa 1660: Mostly likely German in origin, this ivory telescope is nearly 3 feet long. The more telescopes that are located and examined, the more experts say they can learn about the evolution of the device. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)