Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus, Sive Telescopium: Ex Abditis Rerum Naturalium Et Artificialium Principiis Protractum Novâ Methodo, Eâque Solidâ Explicatum ac Comprimis e Triplici Fundamento Physico Seu Naturali, Mathematico Dioptrico Et Mechanico, Seu Practico Stabilitum.

ZAHN, Johann.

$18,000.00

Item Number: 125830

Quirini Heyl: Herbipoli [Würzburg], 1685-1686.

First edition of the most important work on the early history and manufacture of microscopes and telescopes; particularly valuable for its illustrations of both simple and compound microscopes of the period, including the type of compound instrument used by Robert Hooke. Folio, three volumes bound into in one in full contemporary vellum, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, with extra engraved title and over 200 engraved or woodcut illustrations, many full-page and some folding tables.

Johann Zahn, a Premonstratensian monk of Würzburg and the leading representative of German monastic learning, was also a naturalist, mathematician and astronomer. In this important early history of microscopes and telescopes, Zahn envisioned the first camera that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography (that is, actually capturing the image on some sort of medium) in 1685, though it would be almost 150 years before technology caught up to the point where this was possible to actually build. In Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus, Zahn provided an overview of contemporary and literature (Leeuwenhoekm Huygens, Kircher, Fontana, Digby, Redi, Neri, etc.) as well as practical instructions for the construction of lenses, telescopes and other optical apparatus. The numerous plates illustrate not only lens-making but the earliest types of microscopes and telescopes (Monconys, Kircher, the English microscopes - with elaborate tables of the sizes of magnification, Cuno, etc.). Of special interest are his portable cameras: the Reflex, illustrated in Fundamentum I, a wooden box with the lenses arranged in an adjustable tube by means of which the image was focused on the oiled paper or opaque glass screen (the first published reference to the focusing-glass). In Fundamentum III, he illustrated a small box camera fitted with a tele-lens consisting of a convex lens of longer and a concave lens of shorter focal length. This tele-lens was known to Leonard Digges over a century earlier, but this is the first time that the system was incorporated in the camera obscura. "In size and construction, Zahn's cameras and prototypes of nineteenth-century box and reflex cameras. It is really remarkable that no further development took place until the middle of the nineteenth century: in 1685 the camera was absolutely ready and waiting for photography" (Gernsheim).