Secret Lab (telescope) inside Lnd. "Monument"

[Macavity]

Another from my Firefox "Pocket". Who knew... Londoners?
Interesting Astro stuff re. Robert Hooke's "parallax scope"! 😎

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170810-the-medieval-lab-hidden-inside-a-famous-monument

Edited September 20, 2020 by Macavity

[JamesF]

I think I knew this, but I'm not entirely sure :)

James

[ollypenrice]

I suspect I didn't know it, despite having read Stephen Inwood's excellent biography of Hooke.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/0230768458  However, I'd better check because I'm quite likely to have forgotten this part of his story.  (What I do remember is that Hooke took a ride on horseback out of London and bruised his testicles in the process. It struck me that history affords little privacy to those with whom it busies itself!)

😁lly

Edited September 30, 2020 by ollypenrice
Typo

[Peter Drew]

Should have ridden sidesaddle.        🙂

[Captain Scarlet]

Fascinating. My favourite part was "There is no surviving portrait of Robert Hooke, since it is thought to have been burned by his rival, Sir Isaac Newton"

[JeremyS]

I was confused by the name of the webpage link which includes "medieveal lab". The medieval period ended a couple of centuries before the Fire and the Monument. At least this isn't mentioned in the article itself.

The book by Allan Chapman, "England's Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution" is excellent and includes a portrait painted by Rita Greer of how Hooke might have appeared.