10.1. A Little Bit More of Galileo#
When we last left Galileo, he was in Padua working out the correct understanding of falling bodies and projectiles. He didn’t publish that work until he was under house arrest in his villa outside of Florence and had to smuggle it out of Italy to the Netherlands. How his arrest-story came about is legendary, and not necessarily how most people imagine it. First, some more science, then some of the back-story to his troubles with the Inquisition.
Galileo had been in Padua for 16 years when in May of 1609 he heard of a novelty that was being sold in France, Germany, England, and the Netherlands where it was invented. This was of course the telescope. He was good with with his hands and eventually employed an instrument maker. Together, within a month, from only a word of mouth description, he was able to grind and polish lenses and construct his own telescope. It was just 3x magnification, not as good as what was “out there.” But he improved on his technique and built 8x, 15x, and 30x versions. Here is one of his first prototypes from the science museum in Florence, Italy. He used it to look across the land and water and then…he looked up.
In August of 1609 he took his then 8x version to Venice and demonstrated it to the intellectual community, and also politicians. Galileo always had his family’s debts on his mind and he gave an exhibition from the top of the St. Marco tower and showed that one could see ships much further away than with the naked eye. Venice, was a maritime power and sometimes the target of naval attack from the East and so the Venetian Senate had a vested interest in this new early warning system. They were impressed, doubled his salary, and awarded him lifetime tenure at the university…but also froze his salary at the new level. Although he was now one of the most highly paid professors in the Venetian Republic, the prohibition of any raises for the rest of his life didn’t sit well with the ambitious 45 year old.