D. Graham Burnett. Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest: Lens Making Machines and Their Significance in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2005. 152pp.

From the publisher:

With this alluring suggestion, René Descartes invited a young instrument maker to join him on an unprecedented and secret project that promised to revolutionize early modern astronomy. Descartes believed he had conceived a new kind of telescopic lens, ground to the shape of a hyperbola, that would surpass anything ever to come from the hands of the glass-working craftsmen of the era. This study traces the inception, development, and finally the collapse of this ambitious enterprise, and examines Descartes’ lens in the broader context of seventeenth-century optics, instrumentation, and mechanical craftsmanship. The history of the device sheds light on the history of telescopes in the period, on the relationship between instrument makers and mathematical adepts, on the mechanical philosophy and its connection to machine, and on the thought and work of Descartes himself.

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