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Other Instruments
“Amici found a way to construct an achromatic telescope without lenses, with only
one refracting medium. He was led to this construction by the discovery that he
made of a property of refracted light. This property, even if (as he demonstrated) it is
an immediate consequence of the theory of refraction, had never been observed by
anyone before him” (G. B. Donati, Elogio, ibid., p.14).
“Using the law he had discovered as a basis, Amici constructed a telescope without
lenses, composed only of four plane sided prisms, all of the same quality of glass,
with a magnification of about four times, and perfectly achromatic. And he therefore
proved that even without using two differently refracting or dispersive substances it
would have been possible, as early as Newton - who was convinced of the opposite -
to have constructed achromatic telescopes.” (G. B. Donati, Elogio, ibid., p. 15).
In September of 1820, the Baron Franz Xaver von Zach was visiting Amici’s
workshop in Modena. From among the many instruments there his attention was
particularly attracted to a combination of two prisms of isosceles glass, through the
movement of which the angular distance of two faraway objects could be measured.
Amici’s intention had been that of providing topographers and navigators with a
small, easy-to-use and easily rectified instrument with which they could measure
even the angles beyond 180 degrees (posterior observation) with a high degree of
precision.
Zach, who had tried out the instrument in May of the same year in Genoa, together
with the Swiss astronomer Johann Kaspar Horner (1774-1834), spoke very
flatteringly of it in a long note which he published after the Lettre from Amici
(download pdf).
Besides the floating level fitted with a Galilean telescope (see Level), Amici created
other instruments for determining the horizontal plane and he described them in the
paper Sopra alcuni Istrumenti che servono a conoscere le situazioni parallele
all’Orizzonte (About instruments used to identify the parallel situations at the
horizon), read at the Accademia dei Georgofili on 5 March 1837, and published in the
“Atti” of the Academy, Volume XV-1837, p. 129-136 (download pdf ).
The first is an improvement introduced in the level that land-surveyors used to place
the Praetorian tables horizontally, consisting of “a sheet or flat strip of metal over
which a tube of glass containing wine spirit and the bubble of air is securely
fastened”.
But considering that large operations “require machines of a higher order than the
pocket-sized little level just outlined”, he proposed a larger level aimed at satisfying
the most delicate research projects of Geodesy. This level had three parts: the Base,
the Regulator and the Telescope, “to which the axis of rotation in azimuth and the
tube with the air bubble are solidly connected”.
Explanation of Figures 1, 2, 3 which are the level, the regulator and the
base.
A, B. Brass pipe which contains the glass tube, which is divided with a
diamond in inches and lines on the top to indicate the ends of the
bubble and to determine the angular deviations, which in the present
level are three minute seconds for every line of the Paris foot.
C. Screws which allow lateral movement to tube A, B.
D. Screws which move the same tube up to down and vice versa.
E, F. Objective lens and eyepiece of the telescope which magnifies 30
times. The double eyepiece F of a Ramsden form can be substituted by
a quadruple eyepiece which shows objects vertically.
G. Tube which holds the crossed threads, and besides the longitudinal
movement to remove the parallax also turns around the optical axis
with two button screws H which press against a protruding thin sheet
and in this way one of the threads becomes horizontal.
L. Azimuth rotating axis.
M. Its correcting screws.
N. Empty cone in which the aforementioned rotating axis enters.
PQ, RS, TV. Profile of three thin sheets which form a cross when
viewed on a plane. The one in the middle which is pinned at the lowest
one with the ends of its U-arms receives a swinging movement from the
screw Y which the spring X acts upon. The other cross at the higher
point with the action of screw Z and of the corresponding opposed
spring, takes a similar movement of swinging around the poles P, Q, in
a right angle to the first. In this way with the use of screws Y, Z alone
the axis of rotation in Azimuth is promptly placed in the vertical.
K. Brass screw in the centre of the tripod onto which the Regulator is
screwed.
h. Screws which fasten the triangular legs g to the table above.
New camera lucida and positive achromatic eyepiece (1839)
On 14 October 1839 at the First Meeting of Italian Scientists in Pisa Amici also read a
presentation about two optical devices recently invented by him: a new camera lucida
and a positive achromatic eyepiece (cf. Atti della Prima Riunione degli Scienziati
Italiani tenuta in Pisa nell’Ottobre del 1839< Acts of the First Meeting of Italian
Scientists, held in Pisa in October of 1839 > Nistri: Pisa 1840, p. 49-50). The main
piece of his new camera lucida
Between 1857 and 1860 Amici proposed an instrument for the observations of the
striae of the stellar spectra to his assistant Giovanni Battista Donati.
“The difficulties which have to be overcome in this type of research”, wrote Donati
in the paper Intorno alle strie degli spettri stellari < On the lines in stellar spectra >
(“Il Nuovo Cimento”, vol. XV, 1862, p. 296-302), are principally two”:
In order to have the greatest amount of light possible, the large burning lens of 41 cm
in diameter and 158 cm of focal distance, left to the Grand Duke Cosimo dei Medici
by Benedetto Bergans of Dresden on his way through Tuscany after 1690, which
was kept in the Tribune of Galileo in the royal Museum in Florence was used. Near
the focal point of the lens a narrow slit was placed where a great beam of light
gathered and could easily be examined by the prism. Amici suggested “positioning
between the prism and the slit a small lens, the focus of which is coincident with the
slit. So the rays leaving the slit pass through the small lens and then meet the prism,
all in parallel directions [...] I mounted this lens parallactically over a mobile stand, as
can be seen in Table I, Figure 1. [...] Figure 2 shows (on a much larger scale than
Fig. 1) the other part of the instrument which contains the prism, the slit and the
small telescope with which the striae can be observed».
In the Elogio del Prof. Gio. Battista Amici he then remembered the article Note sur
trois spectroscopes présentés (“Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences”, vol.
LV-1862, p. 576-578), in which the French astronomer Jules Janssen described,
among others, the compound prism of Hoffmann:
In 1909 P. Salet wrote, about direct vision prisms, that “Ce système de spectroscope
est un de ceux qui ont été le plus employé en Astronomie. Janssen l’à présenté à
l’Académie en 1862 et s’en est servi à Rome avec Secchi pour faire des observations
de spectres d’étoiles. Ce spectroscope est formé essentiellement d’un prisme
d’Amici, c’est-à-dire comprenant deux prismes de crown et un de flint collés avec du
baume de Canada et disposés dans l’ordre représenté par la figure 4. L’effet de ce
prisme est, en quelque sorte, l’opposé de celui du prisme achromatique, c’est-à-dire
qu’il ne dévie pas la lumière des rayons moyens, bien qu’il disperse encore, parce que
la dispersion du flint est de beaucoup prédominante. L’opticien Hoffmann porta à
cinq le nombre des prismes: deux en flint pesant et trois en crown” (P. Salet,
Spectroscopie astronomique, Doin, Paris 1909, p. 41-42).
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