How Isaac Newton Changed Telescopes Forever

Adam Savage investigates one of The Royal Society's most prized artifacts: a reflecting telescope designed and made by Sir Isaac Newton! As depicted in Newton's drawings--this model was one of the first reflecting telescopes successfully created to demonstrate the concept, which is still the fundamental design for telescopes today!

Shot by Josh Self and edited by Norman Chan

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Intro bumper by Abe Dieckman

Thanks for watching!

[Arisaka]

Please keep making Royal Society videos! I absolutely love the enthusiasm shown for the objects featured.

[ironageamplification]

These videos that have been posted recently have been particularly amazing. Keep up the good work, I never knew how much fascinating old technology the royal society maintained.

[Merennulli]

I really love seeing these interviews where both Adam and the person he's speaking to have a deep appreciation and a meaningful perspective on the things they're discussing. Adam's insights into it help a lot.

I've gotten used to interviews where the person asking doesn't have a clue what they're asking about and leads the interview towards something unrelated that they think they understand instead. It's particularly grating when it's something I care about and I can just tell the whole time that the interviewer is just phoning it in. It's so refreshing to see when Adam and Norm interview people because they are absolutely excited to be there and talking about it every single time, almost like we in the audience are just witnessing them fan-gush over it, but then they ask these informed questions that bring out things I would have never thought to even consider. Like how this was a demonstration model rather than how Newton actually envisioned it being used. I always assumed he started with a small one like this and then worked up to larger in iterative improvements.

[BrBobMackeSJ]

Newton had to develop his own technique for grinding mirrors, because the shops of the time were unable to grind them to the precision he needed. There is a fairly detailed description of the process that he used in his book "Optics".

[sshuggi]

I think a series of Adam Savage Remakes would go well with these Royal Society visits and other museums. Make movie prop versions, working versions, scale versions, whatever would be an appropriate time for each item to make a handful of episodes per item.

[tuomopoika]

Bubbles in lenses were still common even the last century. Early Zeiss Biotar lenses have often small bubbles. They don't necessarily affect the image quality that much.

[DWSOutdoors]

Once again Adam I must say how thankful I am that you get together with the proper people to have such a valuable conversation and you are so kind to share these with the world!

[effTK]

Adam's enthusiasm over discovering something amazing and learning something new always makes me happy.

[franklorenzo]

Amazing piece! You know what else would be amazing? Watching Adam building one based on Ser Issac Newton original plans. Amazing video, thank you.

[zacretzer]

I can’t put into words how much I adore these Royal Society videos. I would watch however many hours of content you could shoot with these incredible presenters with their amazing object lessons in science history.

[Anabis_Xero]

I just received an 8” Newtonian reflector yesterday. Very cool seeing this posted today.

[neilcreek]

I was fortunate enough to see this in person when it came to Melbourne Museum 20 years ago. Having been into astronomy as a kid, and hand ground my own telescope mirror, seeing this was as close to a religious experience as I've ever had.

[lujho]

What an insane coincidence! I’m listening to the audiobook of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver and just hours ago I left off at a part when the main character, a friend of Newton’s, was talking about and using this exact type of telescope to observe Newton himself.

[stevenbergom]

I built a 6" Newtonian and the reason mine has several holes on the side of the tube is because I mis-calculated the position of the eyepiece, twice!

[Fuzzycat]

These are my favourite videos on this channel so far. Extremely educational.

[martinlagrange]

Happy to share than I have a 10" Newtonian, and it is an absolute deep-sky weapon - the 'Newt' remains one of the greatest and widespread-used reflectors, and the most constructed - for centuries. It's possible to buy replicas of the original instrument, with modern optics and materials - and they work well.

[chrismofer]

2:45 the "stalks" are called spider vanes and there are many interesting designs with different pros and cons. the one chosen by newton was best for this small design to have the least diffraction and to be practically built.

[Adrokk]

Love these sorts of videos, seeing and explaining things from history, where they come from and with a fantastic sense of curiosity. Thank you Adam and team!

[paulkinzer]

As someone who's made more than a dozen telescopes, both reflectors and refractors, this was particularly interesting. I've seen this model, or reproductions of it (including Adam's) before, but never knew this was meant as a model.

I made a model of a Galilean telescope years ago, and it really shows the advantages of Newton's design: it isn't just that the early refractors had chromatic aberrations ('false color' rainbow effects), but their field of view is so tiny. Even though Galileo studied the moon at pretty low magnification (25x?), he could not see the whole moon at one time. What a drag it must have been just to aim the thing properly, and then track with it by hand as the earth rotated. The moon would have been the easiest target, being so big and bright. But he also studied Jupiter, and not only discovered its four largest moons, he studied them over enough time to figure out that they were four bodies orbiting the planet at different distances. Knowing the mount he used to guide the scope, I'm amazed at his perseverance.

[Puddertoget]

Someone should really tell Adam about John Dobson who founded Sidewalk Astronomers in San Francisco and invented the home made Dobsonian Telescope. Some of his giant telescopes are probably still around. Visiting this community is ripe ground for some great Tested content! I bet the Sidewalk Astronomers are probably still around making telescopes. 😄