Astronomical use of pinhole images in William of Saint-Cloud's Almanach Planetarum (1292)

DOI10.1007/BF00374761MaRDI QIDQ1205972zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors J. L. Mancha

Publication date 1 April 1993

Published in Archive for History of Exact Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00374761

zbMATH Keywords

Erasmus ReinholdGemma FrisiusJohannes Kepleroptical theoryTycho Brahe

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in Late Antiquity and medieval Europe (01A35) History of mathematics in the 15th and 16th centuries, Renaissance (01A40) Collected or selected works; reprintings or translations of classics (01A75)

Review text

The author asserts that there are two aspects of the so-called problem of pinhole images during the Middle Ages. The first concerns optical theory directly and requires an answer to the question of the formation of these images. The second one refers to the astronomical use of pinhole images. This seems to have been well known at least since the 12th century. In the second half of the 16th century it came into increasing use among professional astronomers as Erasmus Reinhold, Gemma Frisius, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. The object of this paper is to provide an edition, with translation and commentary, of a passage on pinhole images of William of Saint-Cloud's Prologue to his Almanach planetarum, composed in 1292.

Recommendations

• Studies in medieval astronomy and optics
• Egidius of Baisiu's theory of pinhole images
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7640371
• Geometry of Light and Shadow: Francesco Maurolyco (1494–1575) and the Pinhole Camera
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Cites work

• A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy
• Egidius of Baisiu's theory of pinhole images
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3910344 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6321719 (Why is no real title available?)
• Kepler, Tycho, and the ``Optical part of astronomy: the genesis of Kepler's theory of pinhole images
• The theory of pinhole images in the fourteenth century

Cited in

(2)

• Egidius of Baisiu's theory of pinhole images
• Tables for the radii of the Sun, the Moon, and the shadow from John of Gmunden to Longomontanus

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