4 instruments apart from telescope that Galileo invented
The world needs no introduction of Galileo Galilei, the 16th century Italian astronomer cum inventor who pioneered the world’s first telescope. Often deemed as the father of observational astronomy, he invented the refracting telescope in 1609. All he did was take the precursor to the telescope and improve upon it. The earlier device had a combination of two lenses within a tube and could magnify items by three times. However, its drawback was that it showed them upside down. But Galileo’s modification included adding a third lens, which helped magnify the image by eight times and even showed them right side up. In fact, over the course of history, Galileo developed many other telescope models, including the one that could magnify up to 30 times. That makes us wonder, is telescope the only scientific device that Galileo ever invented? Absolutely not. He did develop many more instruments. Here are 4 of them.
Astronomical ring dial
In the 1620s, Galileo developed a portable device which was a sphere with intersecting rings. Wondering what its purpose was? Well, it could be lined up with the equator, the meridian and various other angles, all with respect to the celestial equator. With the instrument, people could measure longitudes, latitudes, altitudes and other geographical and astronomical measurements, including detection of time.
Astrolabe
In 1632, Galileo developed a portable astronomical calculator. It could help measure the time, with respect to the altitude of the Sun and the stars at a given place and duration of the day. It was mainly used by sailors as a navigational instrument to determine the exact time of day or night, figure out when the sun will rise and go down and even find positions of certain other stars in the universe.
Military compass
Even before Galileo invented the telescope, he had pioneered the first geometric and military compass. In fact, it was the year 1597 and his debut commercial scientific instrument. Simply put, this device comprised of two joined rulers that moved over a third, curved ruler and acted as a kind of calculator. It was primarily used by merchants to determine monetary exchange rates and shipwrights to examine hull designs in scale model. Above all, it was used on the war field where soldiers used the instrument as a compass to figure out the charge for a cannon. How intriguing is that!
Triangulation instrument
In the year 1600, Galileo was greatly interested in surveying and hence invented an instrument to help calculate time. He named it triangulation instrument and even inscribed the words “to find the distance by means of the surface” inside it. Widely used by contemporary explorers, it could determine the distance of a faraway point by taking measurements from two places and then applying simple geometry.