www.antik.it/Nautical-antiques/6914-Large-telescope/
1617010119Code 6914 Large telescopeLarge brass telescope with mahogany wood handle signed A. Fries optical Genova, from the second half of the 19th century. Focus with extensions. Maximum length 131.5 cm - 51.77 inches, minimum 30 cm - 11.8 inches, focal diameter 6.5 cm - 2-55 inches. Excellent condition, fully functional, complete with cap and dust flap, sunshade extension and base for support made to measure of wood and brass.
The optician Adolf Fries, born in Brünn in 1829 and living in Genoa in Via Carlo Felice (now Via XXV Aprile), was the protagonist of a curious story at the end of the 19th century. In the autumn of 1881 he had donated to the Genoa Municipality "a metal barometer and a large-format thermometer".
The following year, Giacomo Doria, founder and director for over forty years of the Natural History Museum that today has his name, complained that it had not yet been done "not only out of consideration for the donor, but also for not being inferior to other cities, where we see, in places frequented by the public, they take high account of everything that can contribute to the education of the people."
On 2nd May 1882 the Extraordinary Royal Delegate then officially thanked Mr. Fries for the gift of the two instruments, informing him that they would be placed as per his request in the former Villetta Dinegro, and finally on 2nd April 1883 the Municipal Council approved the design and the expense.
They are now located in Piazza Corvetto.
The legend tells that a day in 1608 the son of an optician in Middelburg, Hans Lipperhey, playing with some lenses of his father, put a concave lens near his eye, having in the hand the other convex lens: with his arm stretched to the point of the cathedral’s bell tower, he saw the weather-cock larger and nearer. He showed it to his father and he fixed these lenses on a small board, making easier the observation, creating the first rudimentary instrument for optical approaching. But Lipperhey was unlucky, in fact when he sent in an application to General States of Holland for the patent for this new optical instrument, in a few days some other opticians claimed this invention.
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Nautical antiques
Code 6914 Large telescope
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