Zacharias Janssen; also Zacharias Jansen or Sacharias Jansen; 1585 – pre-1632) was a Dutch spectacle-maker who lived most of his life in
Middelburg Middelburg may refer to:
Places and jurisdictions Europe
* Middelburg, Zeeland, the capital city of the province of Zeeland, southwestern Netherlands
** Roman Catholic Diocese of Middelburg, a former Catholic diocese with its see in the Zeeland ...
. He is associated with the invention of the first
optical telescope
An optical telescope is a telescope that gathers and focuses light mainly from the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, to create a magnified image for direct visual inspection, to make a photograph, or to collect data through elect ...
and/or the first truly
compound microscope, but these claims (made 20 years after his death) may be fabrications put forward by his son.
Biography
Zacharias Janssen was born in
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...
. Local records seem to indicate he was born in 1585 although a date of birth as early as 1580
or as late as 1588 are also given. His parents were Hans Martens
[Source: a book by Huib J. Zuidervaart which is to be published in the spring of 2008. The in Middelburg has already been shown a first version of this book.] (who may have had the occupation of a
peddler
A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a chapman, packman, cheapjack, hawker, higler, huckster, (coster)monger, colporteur or solicitor, is a door-to-door and/or travelling vendor of goods.
In England, the term was mostly used f ...
)
[ David Whitehouse, Renaissance Genius: Galileo Galilei & His Legacy to Modern Science, page 67](_blank)
/ref> and Maeyken Meertens, both probably from Antwerp, Belgium. He grew up with his sister Sara in Middelburg, at the time the second most important city of the Netherlands. He was known as a "street seller" who was constantly in trouble with the local authorities.
He stated he was born in The Hague on the marriage file of his first marriage, with Catharina de Haene, on October 23, 1610. When this file was refound by Cornelis de Waard in 1906, De Waard found the following excerpt: ''Sacharias Jansen, j.g. uut Den Haag'', "Zacharias Jansen, bachelor from The Hague" Before, it was often thought that Janssen was a native of Middelburg. In 1612, Zacharias and Catharina had a son they named Johannes Zachariassen.
In 1615 Zacharias was appointed guardian of two children of Lowys Lowyssen "''geseyt Henricxen brilmakers''" (''called Henry the spectacle maker''). It is surmised that Zacharias also took possession of Lowys Lowyssen's spectacle-making tools because the first record of Zacharias Janssen being a spectacle maker appears in 1616. The family had to move to Arnemuiden
Arnemuiden is a city of around 5000 people in the municipality of Middelburg in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. It is located on the former island of Walcheren, about 3 km east of the city of Middelburg.
On the 23 September 133 ...
in 1618 after Zacharias's counterfeiting activities were exposed. There Zacharias was again accused of counterfeiting in 1619, causing him to be on the move again, ending up back in Middelburg in 1621.[Albert Van Helden, Sven Dupre, Rob van Gent, Huib Zuidervaart, The Origins of the Telescope, KNAW Press, 2010, page 24]
A year after the death of Janssen's first wife in 1624, he married Anna Couget from Antwerp, who was the widow of a Willem Jansen (probably a relative of Janssen). He moved to Amsterdam in November 1626 with a profession of a spectacle maker, but was bankrupt by 1628. Janssen has been given a death date as late as 1638 although his sister said he was dead in 1632 testimony and his son Johannes declared his parents had died by the time of his marriage in April 1632.
Alleged invention of the telescope and microscope
Over the years there have been claims Zacharias Janssen invented the telescope and/or the microscope in Middelburg between 1590 and 1618. Zacharias worked for some time in the very competitive and secretive trade of spectacle-making and at one time lived next door to Middelburg spectacle maker Hans Lippershey
Hans Lipperhey (circa 1570 – buried 29 September 1619), also known as Johann Lippershey or Lippershey, was a German- Dutch spectacle-maker. He is commonly associated with the invention of the telescope, because he was the first one who tried to ...
, who is also claimed to have invented the telescope. Janssen's attribution to these discoveries is debatable since there is no concrete evidence as to the actual inventor, and there are a whole series of confusing and conflicting claims from the testimony of his son and fellow countrymen.[Albert Van Helden, Sven Dupre, Rob Van Gent, The Origins of the Telescope - 2011, page 43][J.D. North, J.J. Roche, The Light of Nature: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science presented to A.C. Crombie, Springer Science & Business Media - 2012, page 202]
The claim that Zacharias Janssen invented the telescope and the microscope dates back to the year 1655. During that time Dutch diplomat Willem Boreel
Sir Willem Boreel, 1st Baronet (2 March 1591 in Middelburg – 29 September 1668 in Paris) was a Dutch diplomat.
Biography
Willem Boreel was the son of Jacob Boreel (1552-1636), burgomaster of Bergen-op-Zoom. Adam Boreel and the jurist Abraham Bo ...
conducted an investigation trying to figure out who invented the telescope. He had a local magistrate in Middelburg Middelburg may refer to:
Places and jurisdictions Europe
* Middelburg, Zeeland, the capital city of the province of Zeeland, southwestern Netherlands
** Roman Catholic Diocese of Middelburg, a former Catholic diocese with its see in the Zeeland ...
follow up on a 45 year old recollection of a spectacle maker named "Hans" who told a young Boreel in 1610 about inventing the telescope. In his investigation the magistrate was contacted by a then unknown claimant, Middelburg spectacle maker Johannes Zachariassen, the son of Zacharias Janssen, who testified under oath that his father invented the telescope and the microscope as early as 1590 and that Hans Lippershey had stolen his father's invention of the telescope. This testimony seemed convincing to Boreel, who modified his recollections, concluding that Zacharias must have been who he remembered. Boreel's conclusion that Zacharias Janssen invented the telescope a little ahead of spectacle maker Hans Lippershey was adopted by Pierre Borel
Pierre Borel ( la, Petrus Borellius; c. 1620 – 1671) was a French savant: a chemist (and reputed alchemist), physician, and botanist.
Borel was born in Castres. He became a doctor of medicine at the University of Montpellier in 1640. In 16 ...
in his 1656 book on the subject.
In Boreel's investigation Johannes also claimed his father, Zacharias Janssen, invented the compound microscope in 1590. For this to be true (Zacharias most likely dates of birth would have made him 2–5 years old at the time) some historians concluded grandfather Hans Martens must have invented it.
Other claims have come forward over the years. Physicist Jean Henri van Swinden's 1822-23 investigation reached the conclusion supporting Janssen and in 1841 a collector named Zacharias Snijder came forward with 4 iron tubes with lenses in them purported to be Janssen original telescopes. In historian Cornelis de Waard Cornelis de Waard (born 19 August 1879 in Bergen op Zoom, died in Vlissingen on 6 May 1963) was a Dutch mathematics teacher and a historian who specialized in researching science and mathematics of the seventeenth century.
Biography
De Waard studie ...
's 1906 book on the history of the telescope he recounted his discovery of a note written in 1634 by the Dutch philosopher Isaac Beeckman
Isaac Beeckman (10 December 1588van Berkel, p10 – 19 May 1637) was a Dutch philosopher and scientist, who, through his studies and contact with leading natural philosophers, may have "virtually given birth to modern atomism".Harold J. Cook, in ...
in which Beeckman mentioned that Johannes Zachariassen claimed his father created his first telescope in 1604 (and that it was a copy of an Italian device from 1590). The German astronomer Simon Marius
Simon Marius ( latinized form of Simon Mayr; 10 January 1573 – 5 January 1625) was a German astronomer. He was born in Gunzenhausen, near Nuremberg, but spent most of his life in the city of Ansbach. He is most known for being among the first ...
's account to his patron Johan Philip Fuchs von Bimbach about meeting an unnamed Dutchman at the 1608 Autumn Frankfurt Fair who tried to sell him a device that sounded like a broken telescope has led to later speculation this unnamed Dutchman could have been Zacharias Janssen.
Controversy
The confusion surrounding the claim to invention of the telescope and the microscope arises in part from the (sometimes conflicting) testimony of Zacharias Janssen's son, Johannes Zachariassen. Johannes' various claims include that his father invented the telescope in 1590, that his father invented the telescope in 1604, that in 1618 he and his father invented the Keplerian telescope
A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptric telescope). The refracting telescope design was originally used in spyglasses and as ...
(a design using two positive lenses proposed by Johannes Kepler in 1611), and that (Adriaan) Metius and Cornelis Drebbel bought a telescope from him and his father in 1620 and copied it. Johannes also seems to have lied about his own date of birth, maybe so he could stake his own claim as inventor of the telescope along with his father.
The 1655 investigation by William Boreel (who may have been a childhood friend of Zacharias Zachariassen) added to the confusion over invention. The people he had the local magistrate interview were trying to recount details 50 or 60 years after the fact and Boreel may have confused the names of spectacle makers from his childhood. He may have also been confused about a microscope built by another optician for Drebbel, claiming it was built by Zacharias Janssen.
An investigation begun in 1816 in preparation for a memorial to commemorate Janssen as the inventor of the telescope and microscope turned up further problems with the claim including the 1608 Lippershey and Metius patent applications, Janssen late 1585 date of birth, and no record of him being a spectacle maker before 1615.
Albert Van Helden, Sven Dupré, Rob Van Gent, and Huib Zuidervaart in their book "Origins of the Telescope" came to the conclusion that Janssen may not have become an optician until 1616 and that the claims surrounding him as the inventor of the telescope and the microscope were the fabrications of his own son, Johannes Zachariassen, who claimed it as a matter of fame and for possible financial gain.
Illegal activities
In the years 1613–1619, Janssen was tried several times for counterfeiting coins. Janssen grew up right next to the Middelburg mint
MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaA ...
where his brother-in-law worked. These circumstances made it very easy for Janssen to mimic the process of producing fake money. He fled to the neighbouring village of Arnemuiden
Arnemuiden is a city of around 5000 people in the municipality of Middelburg in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. It is located on the former island of Walcheren, about 3 km east of the city of Middelburg.
On the 23 September 133 ...
to avoid the high penalties for counterfeiting coins.
However, he continued counterfeiting coins in Arnemuiden. In 1619 he was apprehended for owning several devices he counterfeited coins with. Normally, one would have been sentenced to death for this crime. However, since the father of the Arnemuiden bailiff was found to be an accessory, he was pardoned from this punishment. Thanks to this, the process was delayed to such an extent that Janssen was able to flee again. Eventually, the case was dismissed. Janssen returned to Middelburg in 1621.
Historical record
Janssen's life was documented by the many investigations on the subject before the Second World War. Many of the Middelburg archives were destroyed by a bombing of Middelburg on May 17, 1940, during the Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
invasion of the Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
. Without these earlier studies, very little would be known of Janssen's life at all because all original files were lost in the fires following the bombardment.
Legacy
The super-Earth
A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below those of the Solar System's ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which are 14.5 and 17 times Earth's, respectively.
The term "super-Earth" refers only to ...
55 Cancri e
55 Cancri e (abbreviated 55 Cnc e, formally named Janssen and nicknamed "Hell on Earth") is an exoplanet in the orbit of its Sun-like host star 55 Cancri A. The mass of the exoplanet is about 8.63 Earth masses and its diameter is about twic ...
is named "Janssen" in his honor.
References
External links
*
Website about the 400th anniversary of the telescope
Lens Crafters Circa 1590: Invention of the Microscope
American Physical Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Janssen, Zacharias
17th-century Dutch criminals
17th-century Dutch inventors
1580s births
1630s deaths
Dutch opticians
People from Middelburg, Zeeland
Dutch scientific instrument makers