Some legacy optics with a tale to tell

[ColinM]

I know several members of NG understand Dutch & will be able to share the finer details in this article.
I had to make do with Chrome automatically translating the page to English.

Seems this well known 17th century builder of telescopes made designs that didn't work well for anyone who didn't also have his particular type of bad eyesight.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2465825-onderzoeker-telescopenbouwer-christiaan-huygens-was-bijziend

It may he that Huygens wouldn't have appreciated being put in the "What the Nerds Do" section and if so, I'm sorry.

[Fons Baerken]

Christiaan Huygens was nearsighted by minus 1 point 5, so his telescope lenses werent sharp

[Hugh_3170]

Most inventions lead to prototypes and then to pre-production examples, so they (Huygens telescopes etc) definitely would have had to go through a "nerd" phase.   

So I think that Huygens would forgive you.  Besides, his place in the history of optics and physics is firmly set in concrete - so nothing we can say will change that. 

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It may he that Huygens wouldn't have appreciated being put in the "What the Nerds Do" section and if so, I'm sorry.

[Birna Rørslett]

Aha.  I share the same degree of nearsightedness with him. Perhaps the reason why I am a nerd???

By the way, I tried to read the original Dutch post and understood about 1/3 of it. Google translate added the remainder later ....