Galileo's Glassworks
From Wiki @ Karl Jones dot com
Galileo's Glassworks is a book by Eileen Reeves, published by Harvard University Press.
From the back cover:
The telescope was 'invented' in 1608. But what about the events leading up to it? Galileo and his contemporaries were searching for a device with which 'from an incredible distance we might read the smallest letters.' Eileen Reeves tells a story of 'cultural optics': magical mirrors and political intrigue, and investigators looking for magnifying power in all the wrong places, while the solution lay in the humble spectacle lenses on their noses.
