Security Monitoring

Colophon

The image on the cover of Security Monitoring is a man using a telescope. While the telescope is primarily used for the viewing of distant objects, a host of earlier, cruder telescopes were used simply for the purposes of magnification.

Euclid wrote about the reflection and refraction of light, and Aristophanes later showed that a globe filled with water could enlarge objects. Yet the invention of a proper telescope was delayed in part because its effects were thought to be so astonishing that the instrument and its creator were deemed evil. In the 13th century, Roger Bacon documented the effects of magnification and wrote about the use of lenses to study the sky: “The Sun, Moon, and Stars may be made to descend hither in appearance…which persons unacquainted with such things would refuse to believe.” Subsequent to his observations, Bacon was labeled a magician and imprisoned.

The use of the lens for magnification only became acceptable with the invention and general usage of eyeglasses. Then, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey of Holland reportedly noticed a church tower jump to the front doorway of his shop when he stared at the tower through two differently shaped lenses at once. Lippershey then succeeded in making the telescope known more widely, and it was he who piqued Galileo Galilei’s interest in the instrument sometimes dubbed the “far looker.”

Galileo and Lippershey each independently thought he could profit from the distribution ...