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Instrumental images: the visual rhetoric of self­
presentation in Hevelius's Machina Coelestis
JANET VERTESI

The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 43 / Issue 02 / June 2010, pp 209 ­ 243
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087410000440, Published online: 22 March 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0007087410000440

How to cite this article:
JANET VERTESI (2010). Instrumental images: the visual rhetoric of self­presentation in Hevelius's 
Machina Coelestis. The British Journal for the History of Science, 43, pp 209­243 doi:10.1017/
S0007087410000440

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BJHS 43(2): 209–243, June 2010. f British Society for the History of Science 2010
doi:10.1017/S0007087410000440 First published online 22 March 2010

Instrumental images : the visual rhetoric

of self-presentation in Hevelius’s
Machina Coelestis
JANET VERTESI*

Abstract. This article places the famous images of Johannes Hevelius’s instruments in his
Machina Coelestis (1673) in the context of Hevelius’s contested cometary observations and his
debate with Hooke over telescopic sights. Seen thus, the images promote a crafted vision of
Hevelius’s astronomical practice and skills, constituting a careful self-presentation to his dis-
tant professional network and a claim as to which instrumental techniques guarantee accurate
observations. Reviewing the reception of the images, the article explores how visual rhetoric
may be invoked and challenged in the context of controversy, and suggests renewed analytical
attention to the role of laboratory imagery in instrumental cultures in the history of science.

On 20 September 1673, Henry Oldenburg wrote to the Danish mathematician Erasmus

Bartholin, thanking him for a recent exchange of books and observations, and in-
forming him of the latest philosophical news from the Royal Society. After mentioning
Boyle’s work on gems and Cassini and Flamsteed’s observations of the moons of
Jupiter, he comments,

Hevelius … has finished the first part, or description of instruments of his Machina Coelestis ;
we are in daily expectation of a few copies of it which (as he writes to us) he has entrusted to
some Danzig ship sailing for England … We are filled with extreme longing to see this.1

Hundreds of books passed through Oldenburg’s hands in the correspondence networks

that supported the early Royal Society, but Hevelius’s work elicited special attention.
Many of Oldenburg’s letters to philosophical colleagues at the time mention this

*
University of California, Irvine, 5204 Donald Bren Hall, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA. Email: jvertesi@uci.edu.
Many thanks to Peter Dear and Simon Schaffer, Jenny Downes, Boris Jardine, Michael Lynch, Chitra
Ramalingam, Laurence Totelin, Rachel Weil and the anonymous reviewers for their insight, assistance and
helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Special thanks also to the Archives of the Royal Society for
their permission to study the invaluable Hooke Folio within a week of its acquisition; thanks also to the
Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford, and to Assistant Librarian Janet McMullin, for the possibility of
reproducing Hevelius’ images.
A version of this paper was presented at the History of Science Society meeting in Vancouver, BC, 2–5
November 2006, in the session At the Edge of Instrument Studies: Alternate Practices and Interpretations in
the History of Instruments in Science.
1 Oldenburg to Bartholin, 20 September 1673, in A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall (eds.), The
Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (hereafter CHO), 13 vols., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1965–1988, vol. 10, letter 2236.
210 Janet Vertesi
forthcoming volume, revealing the Royal Society’s eagerness to see this new publi-
cation. Certainly the Machina Coelestis promised to be a large and useful reference
tome, containing in subsequent volumes, as Oldenberg wrote to Cassini, ‘ all
[Hevelius’s] observations from the year 1630 to the present day: and to this, when it is
finished, he promises that he will prefix his introduction to astronomy together with a
new catalogue of the fixed stars which, he says, he has enlarged and corrected ’.2 But the
first volume, hot off Hevelius’s own press in 1673 and eagerly expected, was a self-
described Organographia, an exhaustive catalogue of the Danzig observatory replete
with images and descriptions of his instruments.3 It is this volume that the Royal Society
members were so anxious to see. And Hevelius, for his part, was also eager that his
work be seen by them. As he wrote to Oldenburg in a letter included with his gift copies
of the book,

Moreover I wish to beg you over and over that you will be so good as to communicate [to me],
out of your affection and openness towards me, the opinion of the illustrious Royal Society
and other notable persons too, when in due course this little work has been examined and
read, and that you will freely speak out as to what they feel about it, what they like, or perhaps
what they don’t like.4

What exactly about this book aroused such expectation ? On the one hand, Hevelius
had promised to publish his method of lens grinding as early as the first volume of
Philosophical Transactions, and many Fellows were keen to glean these technical de-
tails.5 The book also offered a glimpse into Hevelius’s distant observatory, with a
stunning visual catalogue of his instruments and detailed descriptions of their con-
struction and his observational techniques. However, more was at stake than simply
information about instruments. The book appeared eight years after Hevelius reported
a contested position for the comet of 1665, forcing the Royal Society to re-examine the
validity of his observational claims and prompting an escalating tension between
Hevelius and Robert Hooke about the merits of telescopic sights in positional astron-
omy. These events had not only proven difficult to manage politically within the Royal
Society, but had also thrown Hevelius’s observations and instrumental techniques into
doubt in London and abroad. The Machina Coelestis Pars Prior therefore offered
Fellows the chance to ‘ see for themselves ’ just how trustworthy both Hevelius and his
observations were. For Hevelius’s sake, it was important that they liked what they saw.

2 Oldenburg to Cassini, 11 September 1673, CHO, vol. 10, 2320, original emphasis.
3 Johannes Hevelius, Machina Coelestis Pars Prior, Gedani, 1673, reprint Osnabrück: Zeller, 1969. The
first volume is also referred to by its alternate title, Organographia.
4 Hevelius to Oldenburg, 13 August 1673, CHO, vol. 10, 2299.
5 Hevelius devotes the entire first chapter of his Selenographia sive Lunae Descriptio, Gedani, 1647, to
instrument-making, and in 1665 published a ‘ Promise of imparting to the world his invention of making
optick glasses’, in which he declared that he had perfected and simplified his method of making conic optical
glasses over ten years of practice, and which he intended, ‘ for the improvement of natural knowledge, to
describe the whole method thereof in my Celestial Machine, and to propose it to the examination and
judgement of the Royal Society’, Philosophical Transactions (1665) 1, p. 98. It is unclear who wrote this, as it
is published in English, unlike Hevelius’s usual Latin contributions. It was most likely relayed by Oldenburg,
as the same announcement includes another similar promise from Huygens: both foreign philosophers were
members of Oldenburg’s correspondence network.
 Instrumental images 211
Recent work in the history of science has emphasized the importance of what we
might broadly characterize as reputation management in the conduct of early modern
science. Steven Shapin has argued that self-presentation, especially ‘ gentlemanly ’ be-
haviour and its associated ‘ epistemological decorum ’, was critical to managing testi-
mony, as it was through interactions with others that an individual’s character was
revealed, essential to judging the veracity of his witness.6 The man of honour, repu-
tation or virtue was trustworthy, and could therefore stand as a credible witness in a
society that communally generated and approved reliable knowledge claims. While
Shapin focuses on face-to-face interactions, this does not necessarily mean that mem-
bers at a distance were at a severe disadvantage ; discussing the case of Galileo’s inter-
actions with the Medici, the Church and his colleagues, Mario Biagioli shows how time,
distance and partial knowledge served as the very conditions of knowledge production,
with historical actors employing a variety of techniques to establish their credibility,
their personas, even their location as central or peripheral to emerging communities of
practitioners.7 In addition, in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s studies of atlases the
authors argue that the production of ‘ objective ’ observations requires particular as-
semblages of observers, instruments, objects and their representations that, through
practice, produce – and reproduce – ‘ the scientific self ’.8 The production and circulation
of images within a disciplinary community thus requires demonstrating the proper
orientation to one’s craft, with its associated disciplined self-restraint and rigour.9
Such scholarship provides a useful frame through which we might appreciate the
tensions that Hevelius faced in 1673. As a distant Fellow of the Royal Society, Hevelius
could and did rely upon the flexibility of epistolary modes of communication to ex-
change information with a wider network of correspondents and to assert his status at a
distance. Such methods produced and supported his authoritative persona, which he
promoted abroad as the ‘ Prussian Lynx ’. But what could members such as Hevelius do
when disputes arose that compromised their status within the community and cast their
contributions – and their reputations – into doubt ? What options for respectable self-
presentation were available to distant members that would allow them at the same time
to assert their credibility, avoid immodesty and maintain ‘ epistemological decorum ’ ?10

6 Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
7 Mario Biagioli, Galileo’s Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2006. On long-distance networks see also Steven J. Harris, ‘ Long-distance corporations, big
sciences, and the geography of knowledge ’, Configurations (1998) 6, pp. 269–304; David S. Lux and Harold J.
Cook, ‘ Closed circles or open networks ? Communicating at a distance during the scientific revolution’,
History of Science (1998) 36, pp. 179–211.
8 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007.
9 Michael Lynch, ‘Discipline and the material form of images’, Social Studies of Science (1985) 15, pp.
37–66.
10 On ‘epistemological decorum’ see Shapin, op. cit. (6). On rhetoric in the early Royal Society see Peter
Dear, ‘Totius in verba: rhetoric and authority in the early Royal Society’, Isis (1985) 76, pp. 145–161. On
sixteenth-century controversy as managed through letter writing see Nicholas Jardine, The Birth of History
and Philosophy of Science: Kepler’s ‘A Defence of Tycho against Ursus’ with Essays on Its Provenance and
Significance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984; see also Nicholas Jardine, Adam Mosley and
Karin Tybjerg, ‘Tycho Brahe, epistolary culture, and standards of editorial provity’, Studies in the History of
212 Janet Vertesi
This article claims that Hevelius addressed these related problems of reputation
management through a programme of visual rhetoric : by prefacing his great collection
of observational facts with a volume dedicated entirely to his instruments, replete with
luxuriously detailed illustrations. As the author and engraver of the many plates in his
Selenographia of 1647, it is perhaps unsurprising that Hevelius’s keen interest in visual
astronomy should translate into the production of another richly illustrated tome,11 this
time offering the reader the opportunity to virtually witness the Danzig observatory.12
But while the book’s many rich and detailed plates provide an interesting view of a late
seventeenth-century astronomical observatory, this view is not transparent. The plates
present a particular, crafted vision of this space to its distant observers, aimed at con-
vincing them of the author’s integrity and gentility as a peripheral member of their
community. Though the textual side of the Organographia remained modest and con-
strained, with precise technical details and instrumental histories, the goal of the images
was not to ‘ record the things themselves as they appear ’,13 but rather to settle a
controversy over instrumental observations in Hevelius’s favour. Thus like Galileo’s
telescopes, letters, emblems and other artefacts crafted for the culture of the Medician
court, the pictures of instruments in Machina Coelestis functioned as instruments of
credit, aimed at managing Hevelius’s reputation at a distance within the genteel culture
of the Royal Society.14
This paper recasts Hevelius’s use of images in Machina Coelestis as central to a visual
programme of remote self-presentation, exploring the visual techniques employed to
reassure his colleagues of his trustworthiness and status, assert his instrumental ex-
pertise and maintain his opinion on telescopic sights. I first review the publication of
Machina Coelestis in the context of the cometary observations and subsequent
controversy with Robert Hooke. Next, I present an analysis of the frontispiece to the
work with its presentation of the ideal astronomer, and then turn to a selection of
images within the work to explore how Hevelius portrayed himself as an exemplary,
even virtuous, astronomer. Finally, I discuss the images’ reception in the aftermath of
Machina Coelestis and Robert Hooke’s vehement response. Ultimately, an analysis of

Astronomy (2003) 34, pp. 443–466. On Hevelius’s induction into the Royal Society see Biagioli, op. cit. (7),
pp. 53–60.
11 See Hevelius, op. cit. (5); Jennifer Downes, ‘ The astronomer as artist: Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687)
and the problem of accurate representation in seventeenth-century telescopic astronomy’, paper presented at
Visual Knowledges, Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, September
2003; Janet Vertesi, ‘Picturing the moon: Hevelius’ and Riccioli’s visual debate’, Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science (2007) 38, pp. 401–421; Mary G. Winkler and Albert Van Helden, ‘ Johannes Hevelius
and the visual language of astronomy’, in J.V. Field and Frank A.J.L. James (eds.), Renaissance and
Revolution : Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 97–116.
12 Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental
Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. The concept of virtual witnessing as it relates to the plates of
the Machina Coelestis is explored in more detail below.
13 Robert Hooke, Micrographia, London, 1665. The visual programme of the Micrographia is discussed in
Michael A. Dennis, ‘ Graphic understanding: instruments and interpretation in Robert Hooke’s
Micrographia’, Science in Context (1989) 3, pp. 309–364.
14 Biagioli, op. cit. (7).
 Instrumental images 213
the visual programme of the Machina Coelestis reveals how these pictured instruments
operated as visual technologies, carefully crafted and deployed in the context of
controversy in the history of science.

Background to the Machina Coelestis

By the time the Royal Society was incorporated in London, Johannes Hevelius
(1611–1687) was already recognized as one of the foremost astronomers in Europe. The
heir to a wealthy brewing family and a councillor in city government, he fostered his
passion for astronomy by building his own observatory on the rooftop of his home in
Danzig (now Gdansk, in Poland). His famous Selenographia (1647) offered more de-
tailed positional and visual data about the Moon than had yet been published in a single
work, and also earned him no small amount of fame for the description of his instru-
ments, which he manufactured on-site.15 As his civic responsibilities kept him from
travelling abroad, Hevelius relied heavily on correspondence networks to participate in
European philosophical discussion. He was especially interactive with the Royal
Society through its prolific secretary, Henry Oldenburg, writing via Oldenburg to the
group since its inception to relay his astronomical observations, exchange recent pub-
lications, and maintain fruitful discussions with such members as John Wallis and Seth
Ward in particular.16 He was also an active contributor to Philosophical Transactions,
sending regular reports of observations and illustrations to the journal which were
published alongside the society’s other letters, papers and accounts of experimental
proceedings. He was promoted to Fellow of the Royal Society in 1664. Finally, his
patronage connections to the King of France guaranteed his connections with French
astronomers such as Gassendi, Boulliau and, later, Cassini at the new Royal
Observatory.17 His correspondents concurred that his observations were unparalleled in
their accuracy, and that Hevelius’s persistence and eyesight were both extraordinary.
Indeed, he was often known simply as the ‘ Prussian Lynx’.18
However, the Royal Society called Hevelius’s observations into question early in
1665, when his reported position for the comet of 8/18 February of that year could not
be reconciled with the parallel observations that had come in from England and
France.19 When the French astronomer Adrien Auzout wrote to Hevelius to protest the

15 In particular, Hevelius’s lens-grinding apparatus intrigued the Royal Society Fellows, who were es-
pecially interested in optical instruments at the time: Hooke would publish his Micrographia in 1665, and
both microscopic and telescopic observations peppered the pages of the society’s journal, Philosophical
Transactions.
16 Oldenburg’s recently published correspondence remains the best way of assessing Hevelius’s relation-
ships with England and the Royal Society: letters from other members were almost exclusively passed through
Oldenburg and are reproduced in full. Hevelius’s own correspondence remains in the Royal Library in Paris,
unpublished.
17 Karolina Targosz, ‘ Johann Hevelius et ses demarches pour trouver des mécènes en France’, Revue
d’histoire des sciences et de leurs applications (1977) 30, pp. 25–41.
18 Winkler and Van Helden, op. cit. (11).
19 While no competing observations were produced for the same night, Hevelius’s coordinates would have
the comet deviate radically from its path.
214 Janet Vertesi
odd observation and suggest that perhaps some mistake had been made, the latter
insisted upon its accuracy, but deferred publicly to the Royal Society to judge which
record was correct. This case has already attracted analytical attention in the history of
science as it presents an example of complex reputation management within the dis-
parate network of Royal Society members : after all, to discredit just one of Hevelius’s
observations was to raise uncertainty about which of his observations could be trusted
at all.20 Ultimately the society judged in favour of Auzout’s observation. But Hevelius
countered by questioning in his Prodromus Cometicus whether or not they had ob-
served the same comet. Perhaps, he suggested, there had been more than one heavenly
phenomenon in the sky that evening, one with the coordinates that he had recorded.
Thus his report could stand firm as an observation of a different comet, and his repu-
tation as a reliable witness would be preserved.
In July of 1665, at the same time that Auzout pointed out the discrepancy between his
own and Hevelius’s cometary observations, Robert Hooke wrote to Hevelius through
Oldenburg to suggest that Hevelius consider using telescopic sights to improve his
observational techniques. Hevelius was famous for observing stellar positions using
quadrants or sextants with open sights, in the same style as Tycho Brahe : lining the star
up in the eyepiece to measure its angle in the heavens. Instead, Hooke proposed placing
a telescopic lens at the point of sighting and outfitting the apparatus with an adjustable
cross-hair micrometer. This way, instead of fidgeting with open sights and taking many
painstaking observations to deduce an average position, one could simply sight the star
in the telescope and use the adjoined micrometer to judge its position. Hooke prompted
Oldenburg to write to Hevelius on his behalf :
Telescopic sights so greatly surpass those commonly used in instruments of all kinds, whether
quadrants, sextants, or levels, especially for any kind of celestial observation, that with them
an instrument of one span radius can be made much more accurate than another of sixty-foot
radius, however good, having common sights … If [Hevelius] would like to know those I have
discovered, I will gladly impart them to him at a word.21

Hevelius’s word appears to have been ‘ no ’. Over the next few years, he developed and
relayed his arguments against telescopic sights through Oldenburg. According to
Hevelius, sights were unreliable. They could shift on their mounts and were not easy to
calibrate. Their lenses could fog up or crack in cold weather. But, especially, mounting
a cross-haired sight onto a smaller instrument could not possibly generate as accurate
results as could viewing through large instruments. He lambasted Hooke for promoting
a tool that aimed to make astronomical observations quicker and easier : for Hevelius,

20 The incident is described in detail in Derek Jensen’s doctoral thesis (pp. 221–231), wherein the author
argues ‘that the comet controversy was truly a turning point in Hevelius’s life and that it shaped all of his
subsequent work’, including the Machina Coelestis. See Derek Jensen, ‘The science of the stars in Danzig from
Rheticus to Hevelius’, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, San Diego, 2006 (UMI 3236816). See also
Shapin, op. cit. (6), pp. 273–290; Biagioli, op. cit. (7), pp. 59–60. The Royal Society’s verdict, ‘ Of the
judgement of some of the English astronomers, touching the difference between two learned men, about an
observation made of the first of the two late comets’, is available in Philosophical Transactions (1666) 1,
pp. 150–151.
21 Oldenburg to Hevelius, 11 May 1668, CHO, vol. 4, 396–397.
 Instrumental images 215
as we shall see, astronomy was a moral profession shaped by the dedication, hard work
and constancy demanded by its instruments. Hevelius repeatedly demanded that Hooke
show him proof that the telescopic-sighted instruments were as many times better than
open-sighted instrument as he would claim : for example, by requesting a comparison
between the two styles in an observational experiment. Hooke could not or did not
provide such evidence, and Hevelius grew frustrated with the fact that Hooke appeared
to be all talk and no action.
The controversy spread from the two men to encompass astronomers across northern
Europe.22 By 1673, on the eve of the publication of the Machina Coelestis, John
Flamsteed, who would soon become the first Astronomer Royal in England, wrote to
his French colleague Cassini through Oldenburg with this biting criticism :
I hear that the famous Johannes Hevelius has promised [to effect] this reformation [of Tycho’s
errors], but as he is reported to measure the intervals between the fixed stars with open sights
only, devoid of lenses, mounted upon his instruments, one can expect no greater precision than
we find in Tycho, especially as we know how hard it is to line up open-sighted instruments on
the fixed stars in the darkness of the night, particularly on the smaller stars. For this reason we
hope that this very noble work will be undertaken by yourselves in the royal observatory that
is fully worthy of your skill, for the renown of France, with a better application of telescopes to
the instruments ; we very much long to know whether we may expect this from you.23

In this exchange not only Hevelius’s prior observations were called into question due to
his use of open sights, but his future observations were at stake as well. This presumably
included his forthcoming magnum opus, the Machina Coelestis, with its tables of ob-
servations collected over his lifetime, and his forthcoming star catalogue (published
posthumously). Oldenburg, who tidied up Flamsteed’s Latin, tried to keep the letter
from reaching Hevelius, purposefully leaving it out of his next package of correspon-
dence with the excuse that

it takes up a whole printed sheet, and as I was reluctant to take any risk with this letter in these
dangerous and uncertain times by swelling it to any notable size, I preferred to seek your
pardon for some delay rather than place this letter … in jeopardy.24

However, once the offending letter was reprinted in Philosophical Transactions

Oldenburg attempted to soften the blow, telling Hevelius to ‘ be assured that the writer
proffered his remark not out of any sort of malice but through yielding to an excessive
desire to advance and develop astronomy ’.25
The publication of Machina Coelestis, then, occurred at a time when Hevelius’s
reputation was on the line. The troublesome cometary observation and accusations of
poor instrumentation had damaged his ability to claim authority as a contributing

22 Voula Saridakis’s doctoral thesis identifies this debate as foundational for how it shaped the role,
methods and research directions of the emerging institutional astronomer. See Voula Saridakis, ‘ Converging
elements in the development of late seventeenth-century disciplinary astronomy: instrumentation, education,
networks, and the Hevelius–Hooke controversy’, Ph.D. thesis, Virginia Institute of Technology, 2001, OCLC
48543806.
23 Flamsteed to Cassini, in Oldenburg to Cassini, 11 September 1673, CHO, vol. 10, 2320a.
24 Oldenburg, CHO, vol. 10, 2327.
25 Oldenburg to Hevelius, 30 September 1673, CHO, vol. 10, 2350.
216 Janet Vertesi
astronomer to the Royal Society. The subsequent correspondence with Hooke had
sewn the seeds of a bitter dispute between the two astronomers that would soon ex-
plode into an ugly public controversy. And Hevelius’s refusal to accept telescopic sights
was already generating concern among English astronomers that his observations could
not hope to advance the state of the art. Seen in this context, the Machina Coelestis was
positioned to face a complex task : to assert Hevelius’s authority and trustworthiness, to
defend the quality of his instruments and observations, and to counter Hooke’s argu-
ments for telescopic sights, all the while maintaining the author’s modesty and the
‘ epistemological decorum ’ required of the community of philosophers. Both the
Machina Coelestis and the debate over telescopic sights were, on the surface, just about
instruments, but what was fundamentally at stake in both was Hevelius’s own status as
a credible astronomer.
In his doctoral thesis, Derek Jensen called for a renewed appreciation of the images in
Machina Coelestis as situated in response to the controversy over cometary observa-
tions ; he notes how, compared with an image of Hevelius alone at a telescope from
Selenographia (1647), the plates of Machina Coelestis sport the inclusion of multiple
other observers (such as Elisabeth, the French observer Boulliau and assisting techni-
cians) to demonstrate that Hevelius’s observational reports were supported by other
local witnesses. Extending this analysis, this paper argues that, taken together, the many
illustrations throughout the book play an essential role in Hevelius’s overall rhetorical
programme. A closer reading of their form and content reveals how he uses a variety of
visual appeals to renew his reputation as an authoritative practitioner in the course of
what, on the surface, appears to be a genteel technical discussion of instruments.26

The frontispiece : the ideal astronomer and ideals of astronomy

The first part of Machina Coelestis that the Royal Society Fellows saw was its frontis-
piece (Figure 1), sent ahead of the book in an earlier shipment.27 A title page sets out the
plan of the work as a description of instruments, but the iconographic frontispiece
establishes a wider programmatic view of astronomy. Hevelius clearly wished to leave
nothing open to chance interpretation ; while not necessarily his common practice, he
carefully explained his choice of symbolism in the Introduction. This caution was
necessary, as in the frontispiece Hevelius presents the elements of the ideal astronomer,
practising astronomy as a reasoned science whose truths could only be achieved
through patient, virtuous dedication.

26 Jensen, op. cit. (20), pp. 237–241. Note that the Machina Coelestis may also have faced the daunting
task of convincing King Louis XIV to continue to fund Hevelius’s observatory alongside the new Royal
Observatory in Paris; see Targosz, op. cit. (17). While the book sports a royal dedication and an image of
coins raining down on astronomical instruments from the fleur-de-lys, the presentation of self as a gentleman
and outstanding astronomer, discussed below, could translate easily to a bid for patronage from a distant
foreign king as well as to a bid for trust from Hevelius’s distant peers.
27 The frontispiece was sent with Hevelius’s letter of 13 August 1673 to Oldenburg (CHO, vol. 10, 2299),
who showed it to Hooke on 5 September 1673 at Oldenburg’s residence (The Diary of Robert Hooke (ed.
Henry R. Robinson and Walter Adams), London: Taylor & Francis, 1935, p. 59) and reported it in his letter to
Sivers of the same day (CHO, vol. 10, 2319).
 Instrumental images 217

Figure 1. Frontispiece to Hevelius, Machina Coelestis Pars Prior (1673). Copyright: Governing
Body of Christ Church, Oxford.
218 Janet Vertesi
At the top of the scene, Hevelius explains, ‘ Astronomy herself drives a chariot
through the cloudy zodiac, clutching the sun in one hand and a crescent moon in the
other. ’ ‘ Noblest ’ Arithmetic and ‘ Most Ingenious’ Geometry hold the reins of the lion,
tiger and horse,28 who pull the carriage under the direction of Reason. Hevelius clarifies
that Astronomy can only proceed in her course under the trio’s guidance, in order to be
a true science and to eliminate doubt. The claim to certain knowledge, proceeding by
means of mathematical and rational principles for the glory of God, makes Astronomy,
as an angel declares, ‘ Divinae Artis Immortalitati ’. But while Astronomy may proceed
with reason and mathematics in the heavens, she requires particular skills of her earthly
astronomers. Hevelius discusses these requirements in two further iconographic state-
ments. The first concerns great astronomers, and the history and progress of the science.
True to convention, the text begins with a catalogue of past astronomers,29 but
Hevelius’s frontispiece similarly recognizes the importance of history and collaboration.
In the foreground of the piece, four famous astronomers – ‘ Excellentium Virorum
Virtutes ’ – Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Hipparchus and Ptolemy, gather in discussion
around a celestial globe. At their feet is the inscription ‘ Many things have they verily
uncovered, but very many of these things have been left to Posterity’.30
Such a statement about these great astronomers reveals three facets of Hevelius’s
approach to astronomy. First is the claim that astronomers from many different back-
grounds – even periods – can work together and still rely on each other’s work in a
spirit of philosophical exchange. Important to his case, there are virtuous aspects of
Tycho’s work that ought still to be considered in contemporary research by a non-
Tychonic astronomer, just as astronomers with different ideas about the heavens or
about how to investigate them ought not to be discounted. Second, as he claims in his
text, ‘ These two (Hipparchus and Ptolemy) … demonstrate to us, taught by their ex-
ample, in their attentive spirits inasmuch as their assiduous contemplation and scrutiny
of the paths of so many brilliant stars, what we must aim for. ’31 Here Hevelius estab-
lishes a model for the kind of ‘ scientific self ’ required by astronomy, involving hard
work, patience, contemplation and dedication. He returns to this theme many times
throughout the book. Finally, he asserts that astronomy is made up of careful ob-
servations and expertise that may be lost, overruled or corrected by subsequent gen-
erations. This is trumpeted by a figure of Old Man Time flying overhead with his sickle,
hourglass and bugle, proclaiming ‘ DEO & Posteritati ’. The same sentiment is echoed
in the book’s opening text, which declares that resolving and ascertaining truths in the
Arts and Science comes ‘ from these fountains of Geometry and Arithmetic, not from

28 Hevelius, op. cit. (3), p. 24.

29 Giambattista Riccioli’s Almagestum Novum (1651) included several pages of tables of famous astron-
omers and their contributions to science, and used these names to label features of the Moon’s surface.
30 The inscriptions read ‘multa detecta’ and ‘sed quem plurimus Posteris relicta’, which the text elucidates
as ‘ Multa quidem detecta, sed quamplurima Posteris sunt relicta’. There may also have been another in-
scription intended to be placed under the astronomer’s feet, as the text refers to another one absent from the
scene as finally produced. Hevelius, op. cit. (3), p. 26.
31 ‘ Hi duo … nosque admonent, quam attentisimis animis, quantaque assiduitate tot Stellarum collu-
centium cursus contemplari, ac perscrutari, Eorum edocti exemplo, debeamus … ’, Hevelius, op. cit. (3), p. 25.
 Instrumental images 219
presentation to the eye, but from many observations joined together over a long time,
owing to the observations acquired, deduced and produced with instruments ’.32
The pictured Excellent Men of Virtue set high standards for astronomers, who re-
quire a particular set of skills in order to perform the kind of morally and technically
astute work that will lead them to both astronomical truth and a place in Posterity.
These skills are carved onto a large obelisk to the left of the frame in what Hevelius
called his ‘ hieroglyphs ’. The symbols are somewhat idiosyncratic in that they appear to
be unique to this work, but to resolve any confusion about their meaning they are
explained in detail in the text. At the bottom of the obelisk is the top of a human head,
standing for Acutissimo – the greatest acuity. A true astronomer, says Hevelius, must
have a sharp wit and a sublime, perceptive, and penetrating mind. Above this is an eye,
under which is inscribed Lynceo: an astronomer must have exemplary eyesight, able to
distinguish the most minute details and not only specializing in observations of large
objects. Next is a plough, to designate indefatigability and hard physical work,
Indefesso, as a keen intellect and keener eyes must be complemented by a disciplined
body and careful, well-trained hands. Fourth is a heart, to signify Constancy –
Constantatissimo, ‘ assuredly of the spirit’,33 for astronomers must be ‘ most persever-
ing, keeping the courses of the heavens always constant in their thoughts, observations,
and studies … both day and night ’.34 Finally the obelisk is capped with Investigantur,
signified with a star enwreathed with laurels. The investigation of the heavens is both
the goal and the reward of ‘ acute wit, lynx-like eyes, indefatigable labour, and con-
stancy of spirit ’.35
In addition to following the example of the great astronomers, therefore, the ‘ true
astronomer ’ must be intelligent, sharp-eyed, hard-working and true, and devoted to
investigating the heavens. We might note that these virtues closely adhere to the virtues
of the gentleman philosopher, who ought also to be reconciled to consigning many of
his ideas to the neglect of Posterity through his genteel disinterest.36 But we must also
recall Hevelius’s epithet, the ‘ Prussian Lynx ’. The invocation of Lynceo on the pyra-
mid – instead of, perhaps, observatio or contemplatio (used on the frontispiece to
Selenographia) – indirectly but distinctly identifies Hevelius himself with these virtues
of astronomy. Thus, as much as Hevelius claims that these are the ideals that the entire
community of astronomers (including, importantly, Hooke) must strive for, he also
claims that these are values that he himself embodies in his own work. Further, these
virtues reappear as visual themes throughout the text whenever Hevelius pictures
himself interacting with his instruments. That is, while Hevelius modestly composes his

32 ‘… ex ipsis scilicet Geometriae, & Arithmeticae fontibus, nec non oculari demonstratione, ac plurimis
longa temporum serie, debitis Organis acquisitis observationibus deducta, ac deprompta’. Hevelius, op. cit.
(3), p. 1.
33 ‘ … nempe animo’. Hevelius, op. cit. (3), p. 21.
34 ‘… perseverantissimus, cursumque consttantissime tenens in suis contemplationibus, Observationibus,
studiisque … diu noctuque … ’ Hevelius, op. cit. (3), p. 21.
35 ‘ … acutissimo ingenio, lynceo oculo, indefesso labore, & constantissimo animo …’ Hevelius, op. cit.
(3), p. 22.
36 On disinterestedness as a gentlemanly attribute important to assessing testimony see Shapin, op. cit. (6),
especially pp. 223–227.
220 Janet Vertesi
text, apologizing for his imperfections and pointing to these virtues as shared disci-
plinary goals within astronomy, visually he portrays himself actively performing these
duties throughout his instrumental images. Thus he crafts his persona as the epitome of
the correctly disciplined scientific self, reinforcing his claim to excellence in astronomy.
At the same time, he makes visual reference to his respectable social status and proper
instrumental technique. It is to these images, picturing Hevelius as a virtuous astron-
omer, that this analysis now turns.

The instrumental image and the gentlemanly witness

The use of iconographic frontispieces was traditional even for scientific works in this
period, but images of another form were also common: images of experimental ap-
paratus or findings. For example, Michael Dennis has shown how the many illustra-
tions in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1664) served to instruct readers both about
what the microscope was and about how it worked, and about the kinds of optical and
philosophical result it could generate when properly used.37 And Shapin and Schaffer
have argued that such images formed part of the ‘ literary technology’ that permitted
the virtual witnessing of experiments.38 By circulating pictures and detailed accounts of
experiments, they argue, members of the Royal Society such as Robert Boyle could
engage natural philosophers in distant parts of the society’s network as witnesses to
affirm their results. Hevelius’s many detailed plates in Machina Coelestis certainly ex-
posed his instruments’ methods of manufacture and operation and, by extension, their
philosophical propriety as guarantors of natural knowledge, but they also brought his
distant colleagues into his observatory, encouraging them to ‘ see for themselves ’ the
many extraordinary instruments he used on a regular basis. And like other kinds of
literary and visual technologies, through their apparently direct window into the lab-
oratory, these images constitute a rhetorical appeal to their viewers as they promote
and naturalize a particular vision of practice and professional engagement.
Daston and Galison have explored the techniques available for crafting objective
visual reports with respect to the conventions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
anatomical atlases.39 In their account, the artist may highlight their skilled eye and
learned judgement, or their unbiased recording and mechanical means of production, in
order to produce an image that attains a historically contingent status as objective and
therefore factual. With respect to Hevelius’s plates, a dual claim to trustworthy re-
portage is made. The first is the status of the image itself as ‘ a matter of fact ’ : the close
attention to detail, the settings of instrumental activity clearly located in the observ-
atory, the external viewpoint picturing Hevelius using his instruments in the scene, and
the naturalism of the representation all contribute to the sense that this is indeed a
window into the observatory. But the second, consistent with the recent extension of
the authors’ arguments, is Hevelius’s own status. Just as the image appears to be an
37 Dennis, op. cit. (13).
38 Shapin and Schaffer, op. cit. (12).
39 Daston and Galison, op. cit. (8). See also Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, ‘ The image of objectivity’,
Representations (1992) 40, pp. 82–128.
 Instrumental images 221
objective record of fact, it also makes Hevelius himself appear to be an objective re-
corder of facts through his presentation of himself, his instruments and his practice of
virtuous astronomy.

A gentleman and an astronomer

A suite of images reproduced in this paper (Figures 2–5) are typical of the style of the
many plates in Machina Coelestis. Much like Tycho Brahe’s Astronomiae Instauratiae
Mechanica (1598), upon which the Machina Coelistis Pars Prior was modelled, each
plate presents an instrument whose description and technical details are outlined in the
accompanying texts. In each case, the instrument is the centrepiece of the frame, and is
so ornate as to make the contemporary observer wonder as to its practical utility in
everyday astronomical observations. However, ornamentation here makes a strong
claim as to the instruments’ own status and reliability.
The balance between the status of the natural philosopher as gentleman and the
expertise of the craftsmen who made the instruments of experiment was a careful one,
wherein the lower social status of instrument-makers could call their instruments into
question. Stories of poor lab technicians and lazy engravers plagued Royal Society
members,40 even if they made their own instruments (like Hevelius, who ground his
own lenses). But craftsmen could be extremely valuable if they were proven to be
exacting, precise, and highly capable. Hevelius’s images of his ornate instruments thus
make a claim as to the quality of craftsmanship that went into their production. Such
elaborate tooling could only mean that the instrument was made by a careful and well-
practised technician – so careful and knowledgeable that one could no doubt trust the
workmanship that weighted the plumb line, aligned the eyepiece, and inscribed the
geometrical projection that together enabled an astronomer to read off accurate mea-
surements of stellar positions. This assertion is complemented, in a number of occasions
in the text, by ‘ exploded views ’ of watches and telescopes alike, showing Hevelius’s
instruments as complex, expertly assembled, and made perfectly transparent, visible to
the distant viewer (Figure 6).
Usually, however, the instruments do not stand in a vacuum ; they are embedded in a
scene in which we see Hevelius putting them to use. The instrument and the astronomer
are each engraved in a different style with a slightly different technique, and may
therefore have been engraved in two different stages of production, or by two different
artists. However, the surroundings clearly indicate a place of astronomical work,
wherein Hevelius becomes the paragon of such work. One first notices that Hevelius is
as sumptuously dressed as his instruments are ornately decorated. In plate after plate
Hevelius, and sometimes also his wife Elisabeth, stand at their quadrants and sextants,

40 Hooke may be unique as he treaded the line between craftsman and natural philosopher as keeper of the
society’s experiments. But he, too, was unforgiving of those who assisted him: on his relationship with the
engraver for Micrographia see Dennis, op. cit. (13). See also Shapin on ‘invisible technicians’ : Steven Shapin,
‘The invisible technician’, American Scientist (1989) 77, pp. 554–563; and Smith on artisanal knowledge:
Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2003.
222 Janet Vertesi

Figure 2. Hevelius uses a quadrant. Note the difference between the engraving of the
instrument and that of the surroundings, including Hevelius himself. From Hevelius,
Machina Coelestis Pars Prior (1673), facing p. 164. Copyright : Governing Body of Christ Church,
Oxford.
 Instrumental images 223

Figure 3. Hevelius uses a quadrant. From Hevelius, Machina Coelestis Pars Prior (1673), facing
p. 184. Copyright: Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford.
224 Janet Vertesi

Figure 4. Johannes and Elisabeth Hevelius use a grand sextant. From Hevelius, Machina
Coelestis Pars Prior (1673), facing p. 222. Copyright : Governing Body of Christ Church,
Oxford.
 Instrumental images 225

Figure 5. Hevelius and an assistant work with a sextant. From Hevelius, Machina Coelestis Pars
Prior (1673), facing p. 242. Copyright: Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford.
226 Janet Vertesi

Figure 6. The astronomer’s clocks and their visibly reliable mechanisms, an exploded view, from
Hevelius, Machina Coelestis Pars Prior (1673), facing p. 334. Copyright : Governing Body of
Christ Church, Oxford.
 Instrumental images 227
diligently observing the heavens while attired in courtly apparel. As these stellar ob-
servations took place at night in a town on the Baltic coast, Elisabeth’s fur-trimmed
gown may seen appropriate to the meteorological conditions, but it is still unlikely that
any seventeenth-century astronomer, whatever their social standing, would perform
their routine observations in such costume.41 Complemented by the expensive instru-
ments, however, the ornate dress expresses Hevelius’s social status as an independent
and wealthy member of the upper echelon of Danzig society. This is one way in which
Hevelius can modestly, at a distance, claim to be a trustworthy astronomer : he is clearly
a man of means and prestige, which puts him above bribery, bias or concerns for
patronage.42 Thus Hevelius’s portayal in upper-class attire is one of many representa-
tional choices at play in the work, a visual statement towards his self-presentation as a
credible and deserving Fellow of the Royal Society.43
Hevelius does not stand outside the frame, presenting his instruments, or watching
his assistants perform the work of his observatory. Rather, in the majority of the images
featuring the larger instruments, he is actively engaged in using the instrument at hand.
This makes these images useful to the historian as examples of how a sextant or
quadrant was actually used, but alongside such a reading is another important visual
statement. The viewer notes that Hevelius almost always stands at the eyepiece, looking
through it at the heavens, often holding on to the cord that raises or lowers the appar-
atus into position, while the plumb line, if present, records the star’s position in the
sky. Even in the two plates which feature Elisabeth, or the other plates which include
busy technicians, Hevelius is the one at the eyepiece, sighting the stars while his diligent
staff assist in holding the instrument steady, themselves witness to his expert observa-
tional practice. The repeated emphasis is on Hevelius’s constant, active looking. This
visual repetition of Hevelius at the eyepiece reinforces his role as a keen and a diligent
observer, dramatizing his reputation as ‘ keen-eyed ’ or the ‘ Prussian Lynx ’, and recalling
the figure Lynceo on the frontispiece of the Machina Coelestis. And while Hevelius’s
skill is in the forefront of these images, telescopic sights are conspicuously absent.
Documenting his intensive involvement in his own observational enterprise may
seem to compromise his status as a member of the scientific community, as someone so
involved in his work could not possibly maintain the requisite degree of disinterested-
ness. However, we rarely see Hevelius recording his observations. Instead, a pendulum
records the stellar position in the sky, or Hevelius turns a crank moving the telescope
along carefully delineated grooves that mechanically offer a fixed position. In another
example, he merely traces the position of the solar eclipse as it is projected into a room
through a mounted camera obscura, which appears to inscribe itself on the paper. This
may not be a claim for ‘ mechanical objectivity’ so much as it is a claim for instrumental

41 For more on late seventeenth-century court dress in England, France and the German lands see Phyllis
G. Tortora and Keith Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress, 3rd edn, New York:
Fairchild Publications, 1998.
42 Shapin, op. cit. (6), p. 52. The wealth of the gentleman is discussed on pp. 48–52.
43 As Biagioli, op. cit. (7), rightly notes, it was not essential to be a gentleman in order to participate in the
Royal Society, but distant members often profited by presenting themselves as such or, at least, as acceptable
to the perceived requirements of local participation.
228 Janet Vertesi
expertise and disinterest in the results.44 Stellar positions essentially record themselves
due to Hevelius’s skill at the helm of the instrument, and thus Hevelius’s distance from
his recorded observations is maintained, presenting the image of calm, disinterested
expertise.
Such images are all the more important due to the complex status of observational
astronomy during this period. The introduction of the telescope into a discipline that
had previously been concerned primarily with stellar positioning and mathematics
opened up the question of exactly what the telescope was good for in astronomy :
whether it should be used for judging stellar positioning, if it introduced another kind of
practice into the field, and exactly what kind of knowledge – for example, mathemat-
ical or metaphysical – it produced.45 Hevelius struggled with these questions in his own
practice. For example, using different visual languages and modes of representation, the
lunar images and maps in Selenographia quite literally draw a distinction between
telescopic observations and metaphysical statements about the Moon’s nature ; and
Hevelius’s mid-century debate with Huygens over the latter’s claim of observing
satellites and rings around Saturn also reveals the questionable status of lone telescopic
observations compared with others, however carefully collected.46 Further, the very
practice of observation in early modern science was not without its own tensions,
positioned both as the guarantor of knowledge through empirical experience, and as the
faulty result of post-lapsarian senses. Instrumental observation could perhaps improve
man’s imperfect vision, as Hooke hoped the microscope would do,47 but on the other
hand it could also serve to distance the observer further from the observed and thus
compromise empiricism.
The images of Hevelius at his own instruments manage these competing and often
contradictory issues in interesting ways. The repetition of images of Hevelius at the
eyepiece make the claim both for observational expertise and for a certain directness of
experience on behalf of the author of Machina Coelestis’s forthcoming tables of ob-
servations. The incorporation of images of telescopes alongside – albeit independently –
sextants and quadrants demonstrates the correct, distinct roles for both types of
instrument within the new visual astronomy. But further, when Hevelius is not busy
demonstrating his keen eyesight and observational expertise, he is demonstrating his
hard work, his labour and his intellect. On some occasions, such as Figure 5, we see him

44 Daston and Galison, op. cit. (8). This would, however, be an anachronistic application of mechanical
objectivity, a term that the authors apply largely to modes of instrumental management in the nineteenth
century. Note that Jensen, op. cit. (20), suggests that these plates also lay claim to Hevelius’s command over
and synthesis of multiple witness accounts to bolster his claim to observational accuracy. I would temper this
account by noting the importance of Hevelius’s own person in these images as essential to his reception as
individually trustworthy, or at least as the corporate face of his observatory’s enterprise. Command over a
local legion of observers is also claim to Hevelius’s authority and status, as will be discussed below.
45 The status of the telescope as generator of mathematical versus physical knowledge was uncertain at this
time. On the relationship between mathematical descriptions and an underlying metaphysics see Peter Dear,
‘Mathematical science and the reconstitution of experience’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
(1987) 18, pp. 133–175.
46 On lunar maps see Vertesi, op. cit. (11); on the Huygens controversy see Albert Van Helden, ‘Telescopes
and authority from Galileo to Cassini’, Osiris (1994) 9, pp. 9–29.
47 See Dennis, op. cit. (13), on Hooke’s post-lapsarian observational programme.
 Instrumental images 229

Figure 7. The erection of the sixty-foot telescope. From Hevelius, Machina Coelestis Pars Prior
(1673), double-page spread between pp. 410 and 411.

at instruments in the process of repair, assembly or sight alignment, although even in

these cases he is always placed at the instrument’s eyepiece. In Figure 7, he points to his
telescope with his sword, instructing a visiting nobleman about the value of
the enormous instrument. The repetition of Hevelius’s figure throughout the text em-
phasizes his steadfast involvement, his hands-on approach, his dedication – ultimately,
his constancy and indefatigability in the service of astronomy.
Recalling the hieroglyphs on the frontispiece, these repeated pictorial statements
allow Hevelius to demonstrate visually, without compromising his modesty by stating
outright, just how he embodies the virtues he has earlier established as those of the true
astronomer. As such they also demonstrate how one might be an embodied observer
and yet overcome some of the difficulties that plagued observational astronomy, such as
the limitations of human vision and instrumentally assisted sight. The practice of con-
templation, steadfastness and dedication at the telescope or the sextant demonstrates
230 Janet Vertesi
the right kind of labour and the right kind of reverence in the pursuit of natural
knowledge. Indeed, depicting the arrangement of instruments, observers and objects
that Hevelius claims to be appropriate for ‘ true Astronomy’, they also depict an em-
bodied moral self-fashioning. Positioning himself at the eyepiece, scene after scene,
Hevelius also positions himself as the right kind of observer, an exemplary astronomer,
whose work promises no more and no less than accurate results.

Bigger is better
Alongside his incorporation of the values of the virtuous, genteel and accurate astron-
omer into the illustrations in Machina Coelestis, Hevelius also indirectly addresses the
telescopic-sights controversy. We have already noted that all of the images of his ornate
positional instruments feature open sights. Further, his self-presentation as diligent and
hard-working – performing again and again those careful observations which, accumu-
lating over time, contribute to true knowledge in astronomy – is also directed at Hooke,
whose method Hevelius accused of being too quick and easy to guarantee trustworthy
results. Recalling the frontispiece, Astronomy in Hevelius’s view proceeds through the
use of reason and painstaking observations relegated to Posterity; this also formed an
argument for a moral positioning with respect to instruments and to one’s own ob-
servational powers that could produce accurate observations alongside the appropriate
‘ scientific self ’. This view was directly opposed to Hooke’s, who promoted his tele-
scopic sights on the basis of obtaining quicker sighting measurements through instru-
mental aids.
But another aspect of the Hevelius–Hooke debate was over telescopic size. According
to Hooke, the use of telescopic sights would not only allow for faster observations, but
also for smaller instruments that could guarantee a greater degree of accuracy : as he put
it, ‘ with them an instrument of one span radius can be made much more accurate than
another of sixty-foot radius, however good, having common sights ’.48 Hooke also se-
verely criticized large instruments as fatally flawed should they lack telescopic sights :
‘ To what purpose therefore is it to make … any one part of the instrument or obser-
vation more accurate then another ? Since the power of distinguishing by the naked eye
is that which bounds and limits all the other niceness ’.49 For Hevelius, these claims were
outrageous, even ad hominem. Everyone knew that when it came to instruments to
measure stellar positioning, size mattered. After all, the unparalleled grandeur of Tycho
Brahe’s instruments had enabled him to make more acute observations than any other
astronomer in Europe. And alongside his keen eyesight, which he claimed surpassed
that of the average man and even the average astronomer, Hevelius prided himself on
building and operating the largest telescopes on the continent, up to sixty feet long.
Thus Hooke’s attack on large, open-sighted instruments undermined Hevelius’s entire
operation in Danzig.
The final chapters of Machina Coelestis, therefore, attempt to show Robert Hooke
and his followers just how impressively large, and therefore undeniably accurate,
48 Oldenburg to Hevelius, CHO, vol. 4, 396–397.
49 Robert Hooke, Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis …, London, 1674, p. 4.
 Instrumental images 231
Hevelius’s instruments were. The chapter descriptively titled ‘ De Telescopo Nostro
Maximo’50 gives full descriptions and directions as to the construction and operation of
Hevelius’s sixty-foot aerial telescopes.51 The technical details are complemented by a
visual montage of the many stages of the telescopes’ construction and use. In an initial
image, we see Hevelius sitting at a telescope alone, with its component parts spilled out
on the balcony, and tiny letters on the scene indicating, for example, his mechanism for
aiming the telescope and keeping it steady. But we also see pictures of a large, open
telescope being erected outside Danzig. While the images are labelled to give the im-
pression of a technical diagram, they could not enable the construction of the same
instrument in another location. Rather, they aim to impress the viewer with the unique
scope of Hevelius’s production, the grandeur and value of his enormous instrument and
his prestige in Danzig. For example, Figure 7 features a collection of noblemen at the
foot of the telescope, witnessing its miraculous erection, while Hevelius in his fur hat
points to his apparatus. The nobles and the many technicians assisting in the extra-
ordinary scene build excitement about the instrument and stand as testimony to
Hevelius’s technical prowess and social command. A subsequent image shows the ob-
servatory tower in which not one but four sixty-foot telescopes are being used or as-
sembled. What we – and his Royal Society colleagues – are meant to see in these images
is an impressive, reputable and even unparalleled space of work and instrumentation.
The illustrations do not simply show his telescopes or give technical details as to their
construction ; they also demonstrate to the reader that Hevelius’s observatory is the
primary and deserved centre of astronomical production in the late seventeenth cen-
tury.52 Such images may have served as a powerful reminder to the Royal Society of just
how fortunate they were to receive news from Hevelius, and how their own prestige
was magnified by including such an observatory’s owner amongst their Fellows. If such
important observations made with such unparalleled instruments were still desiderata
to the Royal Society, the images of Hevelius’s impressive instruments reminded its
members that they ought to accord the utmost respect to their distant Fellow.

Heritage and pedigree : Hevelius as Tycho’s heir

It was difficult for a merchant or a self-made man to be taken for a true gentleman :
much emphasis was placed on his pedigree, his heritage and even his title, issues which
persistently plagued Robert Hooke in his involvement with the Royal Society.53 While
contributors such as Leeuwenhoek, a draper, were not titled citizens, they were also not
so readily granted the status of Fellow within the society.54 Hevelius was a civic coun-
cillor, a wealthy citizen brewer and a beneficiary of the king of France, all items to his

50 Hevelius, op. cit. (3), Chapter XXI.

51 On the aerial telescope see Silvio A. Bedini, ‘ The aerial telescope’, Technology and Culture (1967) 8,
pp. 395–401.
52 On centres of calculation see Bruno Latour, ‘ Drawing things together’, in Michael Lynch and Steve
Woolgar (eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1988, pp. 19–68.
53 See Shapin, op. cit. (6), on inheriting gentility (pp. 52–56) and on Robert Boyle’s claims to nobility
(pp. 130–144).
54 See Biagioli, op. cit. (7), pp. 68–69.
232 Janet Vertesi
credit abroad, but he did not possess any further noble pedigree. However, he does
point to a particular lineage within astronomy as a resource to support his enterprise of
self-presentation. To certify his status as the reigning authority on astronomy and the
keenest celestial observer in Europe, Hevelius actively promotes a visual analogy be-
tween himself and Tycho Brahe.
Hevelius was a great admirer of Tycho Brahe and adopted many of his methods:
indeed, it was his persistence in the use of Tycho’s instrumental sights and projections
that identified him as a Tychonic astronomer in methodology, albeit not in cosmo-
logical commitments. But to directly compare oneself to Tycho Brahe, one of the ‘ Most
Excellent and Virtuous Men’ as established in the frontispiece to Machina Coelestis,55
would be a suspicious act of self-promotion. Hevelius thus keeps his admiration for
Tycho clear throughout his text, humbly referring his own observations, methods and
instruments to Tycho’s as a point of comparison. But he simultaneously adopts several
rhetorical demonstrations of note that establish a direct connection between himself
and the Dane, by association attributing Brahe’s honorary status, as if by inheritance, to
his own production.
The first such rhetorical move is to state clearly and to emphasize the ‘ in-house’
nature of Hevelius’s operations. Like Tycho’s, Hevelius’s instruments were self-built,
on location in Danzig, under close supervision. Further, like Tycho, Hevelius owned
and operated his own printing press with which he engraved his own plates, did his own
typesetting, made his own paper and distributed his own books. As Adrian Johns makes
clear, this aspect of Tycho’s production – tight control over all aspects of the print
process – was an important factor in generating trust in the midst of the chaos and
piracy of the early modern book trade.56 But in addition to employing Tychonic stra-
tegies for building trust in his reports, the analogy continues in the presentation of the
Organographia itself: a visual catalogue of instruments. The layout and concept of
Machina Coelestis is modelled upon Tycho’s Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica
(1598), also a catalogue of instruments.57 Each separate chapter is titled with a single
instrument’s name ; each sports a print of the instrument, displaying its technical de-
tails ; and each then bears a lengthy description of the instrument’s construction, its use,
its projection, its mechanism and its history. Just as the Instauratae offered a much-
sought-after glimpse into Tycho’s extraordinary observatory, Hevelius’s Machina
Coelestis offers the same, and profits from the analogy. The connection was not lost on
Robert Hooke, who picked up a copy of Brahe’s Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica
five days after reading Hevelius’s Machina Coelestis : he records this event in his diary as
‘ Saw Tichoes Machina Coelestis. ’58

55 Hevelius, op. cit. (3), p. 21.

56 Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998. On Tycho’s press see Johns’s Introduction, pp. 6–40. Hevelius’s Machina Coelestis is
invoked on p. 40 as an example of seeking imperial privileges to inhibit piracy.
57 Tycho Brahe, Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica, Hven, 1598, reprint Bruxelles: Culture et
Civilisation, 1969.
58 Diary of Robert Hooke, op. cit. (27), p. 72, Friday 28 November 1673.
 Instrumental images 233
Hevelius refers to Tycho throughout the text, but nowhere is his connection made
more explicit than in the final chapter, ‘ De Stallaeburgo nostro ’. In the last chapter of
his Instauratae, Tycho Brahe discusses Uraniborg, his castle observatory on the island
of Hven. So too does Hevelius close with a description of his brewery–observatory,
which he calls his ‘ Stellaeburg’ :
The truth is, dear reader, isn’t it, what I have persuaded you, that I approach the Magnificent,
Splendid, Greatest, last king of Uraniborg, which the Noblest Tycho owned, commanded,
outfitted and built by the king, even though my equipment is much poorer ? … While I am not
a King, still I am a citizen of Stellaeburg …59

The relationship between Stellaeburg and Uraniborg continues with detailed illustra-
tions of Hevelius’s house and view of his instruments at work from the rooftop, peopled
with a variety of observers and astronomers : a veritable hive of astronomical activity, a
bounded social and physical space for the specific labours of science.60 In Hevelius’s Fig.
EE (Figure 8) we see a house dedicated entirely to astronomy, much like Tycho’s island
palace. The reader is implicitly reminded of Tycho’s own invocation at the end of his
Astronomia Instauratae Mechanica : ‘ For I hope that also in future there will be some
who are caught by such high interests and who will take great pains to imitate or even
surpass these works. ’61 By the end of Machina Coelestis, Hevelius makes clear that he
has taken up Tycho’s challenge. Despite his modesty in the text, the detailed plates and
descriptions inspire the reader to view Stellaeburg as the heir apparent to Uraniborg.
The images of Hevelius’s observatory at work seal this claim, apparently sketched from
a fictional vantage point but including an architectural sketch of the main house in a
visual reference to Tycho’s parallel illustration. At a time when Hevelius’s own private
institution was threatened by his colleagues’ questioning his observations and at the
dawn of the great national observatories, Hevelius makes a strong visual claim to his
astronomical pedigree, in addition to his civic titles, all the while asserting the extra-
ordinary and superior work and capacity of his own, private observatory.
Hevelius weaves his careful self-presentation into the instrumental images in
Machina Coelestis such that even a viewer interested in technical information would
garner a sense of his status as a trustworthy observer. He constitutes this visual appeal
to credibility with a variety of related elements : establishing and then exhibiting the
virtues of the ideal astronomer ; displaying his high social standing through costume,
ornate instruments, command over a workforce or prestige among Danzig nobility ;
positioning himself as an instrumental authority while maintaining genteel distance
59 ‘ Verum enimvero, Benevole Lector, non est, quod Tibi persuadeas, me Tibi adeo Magnificum,
Splendidum, Amplissimum, imo Regium Uraniburgum, quale Nobilissimus Tycho possedit, jussu & sump-
tibus Regiis maxima parte exaedificatumm, sub adsepectum positurum, quod huic aequiparari, multo minus
praeferri posit? … Quandoquidem non Regium, sed solummodo Civicum Stellaeburgum … ’ Hevelius, op.
cit. (3), p. 439.
60 On the varying structures of home laboratories as knowledge-making spaces in the seventeenth century
see Owen Hannaway, ‘ Laboratory design and the aim of science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe’, Isis
(1986) 77, pp. 585–610; and Steven Shapin, ‘ The house of experiment in seventeenth-century England,’ Isis
(1988) 79, pp. 373–404.
61 Translated in Hans Raeder, Elis Strömgren and Bengt Strömgren, Tycho Brahe’s Description of His
Instruments and Scientific Work, as Given in Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica, Copenhagen, 1946, p. 123.
234 Janet Vertesi

Figure 8. Stellaeburg, Fig. EE from Hevelius, Machina Coelestis Pars Prior (1673), double page
spread between pp. 444–445.

from his results ; and connecting the scope and importance of his production to that of
the famous Tycho Brahe. Such a depiction presented the right kind of scientific self to
his distant, doubting colleagues, a presentation aimed at inspiring renewed respect. But
no story of visual rhetoric is complete without a consideration of its reception. As
Machina Coelestis, the instruments and the observer it portrayed became the target of
sustained attack, the subsequent controversy brought devastating implications for how
the images were eventually received.

Reception and aftermath

On 26 August 1673, Hevelius packed six copies of his first volume of Machina
Coelestis – one for the Royal Society, one for its president, one each to Cambridge and
Oxford, and copies for John Wallis and Henry Oldenburg – into a ship destined for
 Instrumental images 235
London. A few days later, he sent another ten copies for sale to ‘ lovers of literature ’ for
four imperial ducats each, one of which would shortly be purchased by Robert Hooke.62
After six anxious months (his most recent attempt to send valuable paper to England
had failed when the ship was taken by Scottish pirates),63 the copies were received and
delivered. The final issue of Philosophical Transactions in 1673 featured a short account
of the book and its contents, closing with the enigmatic remark ‘ His thoughts of
Telescopical Sights, and his Exceptions against them, deliver’d pag. 294, & seqq, we
leave to the consideration of those, that prefer them to the Common ones. ’64 In spite of
the longer technical review, this brief concluding note reveals the issue of pressing
concern to the Royal Society. When Oldenburg wrote to Hevelius early in the new year
reassuring him that the copies were delivered, he responded to the latter’s request to
‘ freely speak out as to what [the Fellows] feel about it, what they like, or perhaps what
they don’t like ’65 with caution :
I cannot yet let you know what the astronomers of our Society judge of your work ; perhaps
you may learn their opinion in the packet I am going to send you by sea … There are those
among us, of whom Mr. Hooke is one, who despite what you have written on p. 294 against
telescopic sights, persist in a constant and absolute preference for them as against the ordinary,
established sights, and believe that without using them no accurate observations of the
heavens can be effected.66

But Oldenburg only revealed a partial truth to Hevelius in this careful reply. The
Machina Coelestis was not delivered to most of its intended recipients until 20
December, and not written up in Philosophical Transactions until 22 December – but it
had evidently arrived in England a whole month earlier.67 Robert Hooke first saw a copy
on 23 November. On 28 November, he consulted Tycho Brahe’s Astronomiae
Instauratae Mechanica, and by 3 December, he had reported, ‘ At home all the afternoon
and writ Lecture on Hevelius his Machina Coelestis. ’68 A week later, his Diary records,
Thursday December 11th, 1673. Read Sir J Cutlers lecture. Present Lord Brounker, Lord
Dorset, Sir J. Louther, Sir W. Petty, Mr. Haak, Mr Colwall, Mr Smethwick, Dr. Whistler,
Dr. Grew, Sir Cyril Wych, Dr. Croon, Mr Blackburne, Mr. Oldenburg, Mr Colwall junior.
Read 34 of an houre animadversions upon Hevelius his Machina Coelestis.69

Thus by 9 January Oldenburg had not only sold a copy of Machina Coelestis to Robert
Hooke, he had already been subjected to a forty-five-minute Cutler Lecture featuring
62 Hevelius to Oldenburg, 13 August 1673, CHO, vol. 10, 2299. Hooke purchased one of these from
Oldenburg for eighteen shillings on 15 January 1673/4, after his first lecture against Hevelius. Diary of Robert
Hooke, op. cit. (27), p. 80.
63 The pirate episode, apparently a common problem during the Anglo-Dutch war, is recounted in Paul B.
Wood, ‘Hevelius’s business: an unpublished letter from Henry Oldenburg to the Earl of Tweeddale’, Notes
and Records of the Royal Society of London (1989) 43, pp. 25–29.
64 ‘An Account of Some Books …’, Philosophical Transactions (1673) 8, pp. 6166–6178, p. 6172.
65 Hevelius to Oldenburg, 13 August 1673, CHO, vol. 10, 2299.
66 Oldenburg to Hevelius, 9 January 1673/4, CHO, vol. 10, 2416.
67 The dates of the Englishmen’s letters and journal entries in this section are in the Julian calendar.
Therefore, as 9 January 1673 actually took place after 11 December 1673, I have used the convention of
writing 1673/4 to demonstrate the continuity of events.
68 Diary of Robert Hooke, op. cit. (27), p. 73.
69 Diary of Robert Hooke, op. cit. (27), p. 74.
236 Janet Vertesi
Hooke’s opinions on the new book. And he could not have avoided it further : Hooke
‘ Discoursd ’ his topic at the next week’s meeting of the Royal Society as well, and on
15 January 1673/4 he performed an experiment to prove the superiority of his methods,
placing Royal Society members at a distance from a ruler subdivided into minutes of a
degree and making them sight the object with the naked eye. According to Hooke, this
proved experimentally that
not any one present being placed at the assigned Distance was able to Distinguish those parts
which appeard of the bignesse of a minute but they appeard confused. This expt he [Hooke]
produced, in order to show, that we cannot by the naked eye make any astronomicall or other
observation to a greater exactnesse than that of a minute, by Reason that what ever object
appears under a lesse angle is not Distinguishable by the naked eye … unlesse the Eyes were
assisted by other helps from optic glasses.70

The same experiment was repeated on 22 January, and a week later, on 29 January,
Hooke repeated his Cutler lecture (to ‘ six or eight auditors ’).71 He produced a quadrant
with telescopic sights by 23 April, and included plans for a new and improved quadrant
among his many projects throughout the year.72 When Oldenburg received Hevelius’s
response to the above-mentioned January letter with a discourse about telescopic sights
that was eventually printed in Philosophical Transactions, Hooke was on hand to draft
his reply, first reading the letter at Oldenburg’s on 22 April 1674 and then taking it
home with him ‘ to coppy and answer ’.73 When the Cutler Lecture on the Machina
Coelestis was printed in November of 1674 under the title Animadversions on the first
part of the Machina Coelestis, Oldenburg could no longer protect Hevelius from
knowledge of Hooke’s activities. Hooke himself took the liberty of personally dis-
tributing copies of his published lecture among the key members of the Royal Society. A
copy ultimately made its way to Danzig.
Hooke’s book takes the guise of a lively philosophical discussion, as befits a Cutler
Lecture, but upon closer reading it constitutes a personal attack. While it is beyond the
scope of this paper to explore the Animadversions in detail, a few of Hooke’s claims are
of note for how they compromise the visual self-presentation that Hevelius had so
carefully devised. Hooke destroys Hevelius’s source of credibility through association
with Tycho Brahe by focusing on the errors in Tycho’s observations, the correction of
which constituted a main goal of the period. He then profits by Hevelius’s own analogy
by insisting that Hevelius’s instruments and eyesight are no better than Tycho’s, thus
implying that the former’s observations would be subject to the same errors as the
latter’s. He repeatedly claims that size is not important to positional astronomy, and
that his own invention enables a single-span telescope to out-perform one of sixty feet,
70 Hooke Folio MS/847, GB 117, Archives of the Royal Society, 680 sides, pp. 1671–1693. 15 January
1673/4, Section 58.
71 Diary of Robert Hooke, op. cit. (27), pp. 75 and 83. Between these two lectures, he consulted Wallis
about his analytical division of arches, which would become central to the printed version of the Cutler
Lecture and would leave Wallis scrambling to maintain his friendship with Hevelius.
72 This was requested on 4 June and discoursed on 3 December 1674, at which time Hooke ‘ was desired to
have this instrument perfected, and for trying the performance thereof’ with a committee consisting of ‘The
BP of Salisbury. Sr. William Petty, Sr. Chr. Wren & Sr. Jonas Moor’. Hooke, op. cit. (70), 3 December 1674.
73 The letter was later printed in Philosophical Transactions (1674) 9, 27–31.
 Instrumental images 237
making the large instruments appear cumbersome and unnecessary. He declares
Hevelius remiss for not attempting to use telescopic sights more than ‘ one tryal in seven
years time ’,74 making the foreign astronomer appear either lazy, or too invested in his
own methods to embrace the philosophical disinterest that would lead him to giving
telescopic sights another try.
The written version of the lecture, too, prefaces with a frontispiece that lists
Hevelius’s title and social status in large letters, taking up most of the page, with only a
small indication that this is a lecture given by Robert Hooke : this draws attention to
precisely those aspects of Hevelius’s person, book and reputation that Hevelius had
hoped the Machina Coelestis would advance, while downplaying Hooke’s role in their
refutation. It is also not insignificant that Hooke took advantage of the distance be-
tween himself and his opponent by giving this lecture aloud, more than once, as an
oratory in English to the audience of Royal Society members, with Hevelius far away in
Danzig. He supplemented this discourse with a repeated experiment to demonstrate
that such visual skills as Hevelius boasted were impossible without the assistance of
optical glasses. Thus the rhetorical arsenal at Hooke’s disposal outpaced Hevelius’s
decorous, careful Latin and static images, and did not allow for public criticism from
the Hevelian perspective.
Finally, Hooke discredited Hevelius’s impressive instrumental images at a single
blow, identifying the key aspects of their visual presentation discussed above and dis-
missing them as fundamentally invalid :
There is therefore one thing in Hevelius his Instruments, that though they be never so large,
never so accurately divided, of never so choice and convenient materials, and never so trac-
table for use, and never so skillfully and industriously used, will notwithstanding make them
all equal as to use, with one of about two or three foot radius of metal with Ticho’s Sights and
Diagonal Divisions, which is occasioned by the limited power of distinguishing by the naked
eye.75

Reactions to Hooke’s lecture indicate that it was outrageous enough to deserve special
attention. Reputations and friendships were damaged and in need of careful manage-
ment. For example, John Wallis wrote in indignation and concern to Oldenburg, wor-
ried that because Hooke had used one of his own theories in Animadversions, his
colleague Hevelius would think that Wallis supported Hooke. He requested a reprint of
this misquoted letter in Philosophical Transactions to set the matter straight.76
Privately, he told Oldenburg,

I have now read ye whole of Mr Hooke’s against Hevelius, which I think bears a little to hard
upon him. Hee might have published his own way to as good advantage as he pleased, without
so frequent Reflections on Hevelius, as he hath at every turn.77

74 Hooke, op. cit. (49), p. 7.

75 Hooke, op. cit. (49), p. 5.
76 Wallis to Oldenburg, 4 January 1674/5, CHO, vol. 11, 2589. Wallis’s letter to Hevelius of 31 December
1673 was reprinted in the 22 February 1674/5 volume of Philosophical Transactions on his request; see note
78 below.
77 Wallis to Oldenburg, 11 January 1674/5, CHO, vol. 11, 2591.
238 Janet Vertesi
Wallis also included a letter for Oldenburg to send to Hevelius, which indicates his
concern over his own friendship with the foreign astronomer and the tone with which
Hooke’s comments were received by his colleagues in England :

I should not like the distinguished Hevelius to believe that, because Mr. Hooke inserted my
letter into his work, I concur with anything harsh which he [Hooke] may have written against
him [Hevelius]. Indeed, I was entirely ignorant of the book itself before it appeared in the
booksellers’ shops. Not that I would deny, that when he recently asked me causally about
whether I would permit him to make public what I wrote formerly about division by means of
diagonal lines … I did not know that it was to be included in that book against Hevelius … But
however this may be, there is nothing in this letter of mine (faultily printed) which
Mr. Hevelius may take badly; or was written with malice.78

It would take all the strength of Oldenburg’s diplomacy to manage relations between
Hevelius and the Royal Society following the Animadversions. Indeed, a previous pri-
ority dispute levelled by Hooke against another foreign member of the society,
Christiaan Huygens, over a watch mechanism had undoubtedly left Oldenburg no
stranger to managing the Royal Society’s network under similar strain. In a mastery of
understatement, Oldenburg advised the Prussian Lynx,

You will perhaps resent the comments which Mr Hooke has made on the first part of your
Machina Coelestis. If you have some resources at hand with which to defend your work you
may take the same philosophical liberty which he has used to make them public.79

Oldenburg may even have taken some ‘ philosophical liberties ’ of his own : while the
records of the Royal Society publicly note an injunction passed against Hooke on 25
January 1676/7, declaring ‘ that what Mr Hooke had published against [Hevelius] was
done without any approbation or countenance from this Society ’, Hooke’s own hand-
written gloss on this section of Oldenburg’s notes records that ‘ this is a lye of
Oldenburgs forging there was noe such order ’.80
Hevelius’s long reply to Oldenburg’s letter of 1675 indicates that he intended to
take his ‘ philosophical liberties ’ in a later publication. He first expresses frustration
with Hooke for writing in English, which required translation on location in Danzig
and which Hevelius considered both rude and a waste of his time. He further complains
of Hooke’s obstinate interestedness in his own inventions and antipathy towards

78 Wallis to Hevelius via Oldenburg, 11 January 1674/5, CHO, vol. 11, 2591. He also quickly published
public congratulations to Hevelius in Philosophical Transactions, along with a repudiation of Hooke’s in-
vocation of his theories in Animadversions, but this appears as a technical correction and is not enough to
topple the whole of Hooke’s argument. See J. Wallis, ‘ An extract of a letter of Dr. J. Wallis, to M. Hevelius...’,
Philosophical Transactions (1674) 9, pp. 243–246. One also notes that Wallis writes most of the remaining
reviews of Hevelius’s books in Philosophical Transactions, and does so with especial gentility.
79 Oldenburg to Hevelius, 16 April 1675, CHO, vol. 11, 2648. Oldenburg’s letter to Huygens of 2 February
1674/5 takes a similar approach, mitigating another of Hooke’s blows: ‘There are people who, not having
seen much of the world, do not know how to observe that decorum which is necessary among honest folk.’
CHO, vol. 11, 2603.
80 Hooke, op. cit. (70), 25 January 1676/7. While it is beyond the scope of the current paper, a study of
Oldenburg’s role not just as the secretary of the Royal Society, but in keeping controversy at bay, sustaining
genteel relations between foreign astronomers and upholding the status of their testimony would be a fasci-
nating addition to the literature on the relationships between Royal Society Fellows in London and abroad.
 Instrumental images 239
others : ‘ nothing concerns him more than that he should persuade me and the whole
world that his method of observing stars is the best of all’.81 But he also reveals the core
of Hooke’s rhetorical moves against his own programme as established in Machina
Coelestis, especially the triviality with which Hevelius’s observations are treated and
Hooke’s forked tongue in praising Hevelius as a worthy astronomer while simul-
taneously destroying his credibility :

[Hooke] reviles my observations and small labours, slights them and makes them of no ac-
count, and myself he everywhere slanders, mocks and uses scornfully. For in his opinion
nothing is ever rightly or properly undertaken or completed by me, nothing which does not
deserve censure and his unseasonable correction, nor, so far as I could understand, does he
approve of anything among my doings, whatever it may be … The best of the joke is, that
while he almost assaults me with his praises [yet] as is evident from the rest of his phraseology
on various pages he more and more mocks and wounds me …82

Finally, Hevelius insists that Hooke has no right to ‘ continually to tear to pieces,
despise and scorn ’ the observational labours that

it has never so far befallen the distinguished Hooke to watch, for there is no way in which he
could have seen them, much less [know] what may be deduced from them : whether the ob-
servations may be made to so many whole minutes of arc only, or to seconds ? Whether this or
that lay in the power of any man of any nation, or no ? and other questions of this kind, which
depend upon actual events and experience alone …83

With this particular appeal Hevelius undermines his own visual programme, or at least
reveals its inefficacy. Hooke cannot, he claims, judge Hevelius’s observational work
without seeing it done in person. The images, clearly, were not enough to convince
Hooke and his followers of Hevelius’s powers of observation, and Hevelius therefore
wishes to claim that some further, direct witnessing is required in order to establish the
excellence of his observatory. His wish would be granted a few years later, when the
Royal Society sent the young Edmond Halley to Danzig to observe with Hevelius at his
observatory for three months in the summer of 1679 and then to report back to the
society.84 Clearly, the challenge to Hevelius’s instruments as levelled and continued by

81 Hevelius to Oldenburg, 16 August 1675, CHO, vol. 11, 2727.

82 Hevelius to Oldenburg, 16 August 1675, CHO, vol. 11, 2727. Hooke found and read this letter, ‘ wholly
against me’, on 5 January 1677/8 while going through Oldenburg’s papers after the latter’s death in September
of 1677 (Diary of Robert Hooke, op. cit. (27), p. 338). This may have reignited the old argument to such an
extent that Halley was commissioned to pay Hevelius a visit.
83 Hevelius to Oldenburg, 21 August 1675, CHO, vol. 11, 2727.
84 Halley obliged but appeared to play both ends against the middle. He flattered Hevelius by telling him,
‘I revere [you], not without a certain idea of emulation’, and left a letter attesting to the excellence of
Hevelius’s observations and instruments (Eugene Fairfield MacPike, Hevelius, Flamsteed, and Halley: Three
Contemporary Astronomers and Their Mutual Relations, London: Taylor & Francis, 1937, p. 85). But when
he returned to England, Halley called Hevelius ‘ an old peevish gentleman, who would not have it believed
that it is possible to do better than he has done’ (quoted in Winkler and Van Helden, op. cit. (11), p. 97). The
matter would soon become a moot point. Shortly after his return to England, on 26 September 1679, Hevelius
went out of town for the evening, reportedly on a premonition that something terrible was about to happen
and telling his stable hand to be sure to guard against fire in his absence. That night saw Hevelius’s house, his
brewery, and his observatory – instruments, library, press and all – go up in flames. The only documents saved
in time were thirty years’ worth of Hevelius’s own observations, in the process of compilation for Machina
240 Janet Vertesi
Hooke had rendered the images merely decorative, even excessive and dated, instead of
powerful visual rhetorical statements. Unable to use this visual technology to witness
Hevelius’s claims to excellence in astronomy, the Royal Society members were advised
to see directly for themselves.
But Hevelius’s images were damaged by the Animadversions beyond their inability to
enable a convincing virtual witnessing experience. It suddenly becomes apparent that
every time Hevelius is pictured looking through an ornate baroque instrument, he is
doing so without a telescopic sight. What was originally a visual claim to accurate,
diligent observation and appropriate, even moral, positioning suddenly appears, in the
wake of Hooke’s attack, a negligent, flawed and outdated practice. Hevelius’s book was
fresh off the boat : most Fellows had not yet had a chance to look through it before
listening to Hooke’s vehement lectures and participating in his demonstrations, and it
was not distributed or reported in the Transactions until after Hooke’s first lecture in
early December of 1673. No doubt many of the Fellows who turned to Machina
Coelestis after Hooke’s Cutler Lecture interpreted the images in quite a different way
than Hevelius had intended.

Conclusions
It is certainly no surprise to scholars of images in science that historical actors fre-
quently use images or other visual materials to manage their reputations. Patricia Fara’s
study of portraits of Isaac Newton and Biagioli’s discussion of Galileo’s use of em-
blematism, among others, demonstrate how the visual can build credibility or even
legendary status for these scientists among their contemporaries.85 Among such com-
pany the Machina Coelestis, a self-published book printed by a Prussian councillor with
limited circulation, distributed to remote philosophers instead of to princes or institu-
tional benefactors, may seem like an outlier. However, as this article demonstrates, the
visual programme of self-presentation is at work even in a book that is ‘ just about
instruments ’. In this example, images were central ‘ materials at hand ’ out of which a
distant Royal Society member attempted, in the face of controversy, to craft, present
and reassert his identity as a trustworthy observer for the society.86 Hevelius’s frontis-
piece establishes the criteria for the ideal astronomer, and his subsequent visual state-
ments complement his textual modesty with continual reassertion of these aims, goals
and ideals as embodied in his practice. Through costuming, observational scenes of
impressive scale and scope, and ornate instruments, he establishes his persona, while

Coelestis Pars Posterior, and his collection of Kepler’s manuscripts. Peter Wyche’s account of this devastating
fire is reprinted in MacPike, op. cit., Appendix I, pp. 108–111; Hevelius himself wrote about it in the preface to
his Annus Climactericus, 1685.
85 Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of Genius, Oxford: Macmillan, 2002; Mario Biagioli, ‘Galileo the
emblem maker,’ Isis (1990) 81, pp. 230–258.
86 Shapin exhorts the historian to consider personal identity as ‘constructed out of materials at
hand … What materials were available in this culture for making identity? What vocabularies of motive and
purpose were present for warranting behavior and rendering it comprehensible as behavior of a certain kind?
What roles preexisted against the background of which individual presentations might be understood and
evaluated? ’ Shapin, op. cit. (6), pp. 129–130.
 Instrumental images 241
through his visual association with Tycho Brahe he assumes the famous astronomer’s
credibility and the international status of his observatory. And by putting himself in the
picture, using his instruments, he presents his visual acuity in action and his long-term
devotion to astronomy. Hevelius’s images speak to his concerns at the outset of the
debate over telescopic sights and in the wake of the cometary controversy of 1665 ;
whether or not depictions of laboratories, experiments and apparatus in other times
and places were produced under similar controversial circumstances, they may still
present clues to the analyst as to their complex motives and positioning. The ‘ scientific
self ’ is not just cultivated at a laboratory desk through scientific labour,87 but is also
produced as a persona through the crafting and circulation of images.
As these images allow the author to say one thing and show another, they can betray
their own programmatic rhetoric distinct from or augmenting that of the text. Scholars
have long recognized a role for imagery as part of a textual rhetorical programme : as
discussed above, Shapin and Schaffer have argued that detailed illustrations alongside
prolix text constitute the ‘ literary technologies ’ that gave readers a heightened sense of
following an experiment.88 Such a symmetry between the verbal and the visual may
compose one rhetorical strategy for conscripting observers at a distance, but the visual
strategies at play in Hevelius’s work do not directly make visual his verbal claims.
Rather, Hevelius employs the appeal of a virtual witnessing framework in order to relay
images that emphasize what he reserves himself from stating outright in the text : his
status as an exemplary astronomer, the head of the most prestigious observatory in
Europe. These aims are complementary, no doubt, but different enough in aim and
practical achievement as to deserve distinct analytical attention. Indeed, as Hevelius’s
bold images complement his textual modesty and relaying of technical details and in-
strumental histories, we might say that they comprise a distinct visual technology
augmenting the literary techniques at work in the text. Separating the visual pro-
gramme from the literary one permits analysis of various kinds of rhetorical assem-
blage, especially when different modes of argument are leveraged visually as opposed
to verbally. Not just totius in verba,89 then, but certainly aliqui in pictura as well.
However, as impressive as Hevelius’s images were, they ultimately failed in their
ability to reach their audience as intended. The outcome might have been different had
Robert Hooke not published the Animadversions or had he heeded Wallis’s suggestion
to address his point without attacking Hevelius so directly and vehemently. But the
Animadversions had a profound effect on how the images were received and dis-
regarded. The subsequent rise of the English and French national observatories may
have further influenced the practice of astronomy such that by the end of the century,
Hevelius’s plates would not find many sympathetic viewers.90

87 Daston and Galison, op. cit. (8).

88 Shapin and Schaffer, op. cit. (12).
89 Dear, op. cit. (10).
90 On Cassini and Flamsteed’s practices at the new national observatories in the wake of the telescopic-
sights debate see Saridakis, op. cit. (22). Jensen also tracks Hevelius’s self-depiction in later images, especially
that of the ‘ Judgment Day’ scene in the frontispiece to Uranographia (1690), which he explains as Hevelius’s
appeal to ‘a higher court’ than the immovable Royal Society. See Jensen, op. cit. (20).
242 Janet Vertesi
With the failure of this visual programme in mind, it is tempting to cast this example
as another episode in which distance plays a crushing role, thwarting the ability of an
actor at the periphery of knowledge construction to receive the same respect as one who
occupied a position at the centre. But such an approach would obscure the complexities
that confronted actors at the time. More fruitful for the analyst is Mario Biagioli’s
recent argument for a reconceptualization of distance and the partial perspectives it
produces as part of the condition of knowledge production : the background against
which knowledge work is done and made meaningful, not a problem that required
attention and resolution. Such an analytical perspective highlights how the distance
between Hevelius and his colleagues in London was not so much delimiting as it pro-
vided opportunities for Hevelius to use images to great effect. The images in Machina
Coelestis take for granted the geographical dispersion of its author and its readers, a
distance that Hevelius attempts to employ to his benefit by deploying a virtual identity
composed of elaborate displays of instrumental expertise alongside epistolary elegance.
Hooke and Oldenburg also took this distance for granted in their responses to the text,
whether in letters to Hevelius, publications circulated in Philosophical Transactions,
speeches in London or conversations behind closed doors. Some methods were more
successful at achieving these actors’ aims than others.
Additionally, relocating the problem of knowledge reveals the techniques of ma-
noeuvring networks of people and resources to meet and work within these conditions.
Oldenburg’s role in the management of controversy is of particular interest here as he so
carefully chose what to reveal and what to conceal, to whom and how. It is no surprise
to find that, yet again, solutions to both the problem of knowledge and the problem of
social order are so closely intertwined,91 but the strategic deployment of deceit, bu-
reaucratic procedure, language, time and even piracy in the maintenance of this social
order become visible for analysis once we assume that geography is not a problem with
which actors grapple at every turn. Even categories such as ‘ centre ’ and ‘ periphery ’
cannot be easily applied here. The Royal Society was working hard at this time to
establish London as a philosophical centre, and relied upon recognition from other
locations of knowledge production, Stellaeburg among them, in order to stake this
claim. The images in question reveal this tug of war between self-cast locations of
authority that was unresolved at the time of the publication of Machina Coelestis;
indeed, this is one of the very issues that the book’s publication aimed to resolve in
Hevelius’s favour.
But this case also begs a historiographical question for the historian of images in
science : should the failure of Hevelius’s project matter to the reading of the images ?
That is, should knowledge of the images’ reception influence an analysis of their sym-
bolism, structure or intent ? While clearly nonsensical when applied to texts, this
question articulates a common problem faced by historians of the visual in science, who
regularly confront a paucity of material to support their analysis – not a paucity of
visual material, necessarily, but of associated texts about visual material with which to
make robust claims. As historians we are adept at employing letters, manuscripts or

91 Shapin and Schaffer, op. cit. (12), p. 332.

 Instrumental images 243
other written materials as evidence, and as a result analysts frequently seek out corre-
sponding statements in an image’s accompanying text or extant audience responses that
confirm the artist’s intent. But as we have seen above, intent and reception, even literary
and visual rhetoric, do not necessarily align. Quite the contrary : it is especially inter-
esting when they do not.
Thus this analysis of Hevelius’s images – and other analyses of visual material in
science – ought not to depend upon how well the images achieved the author’s aim,
stated or unstated. Instead, in the same vein as the analytical symmetry required by the
strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge,92 we must hold images’
reception in the balance in order to see them at work in their context of production and
of contestation. The tools of the art historian are helpful here, especially Michael
Baxandall’s suggestion that the analyst seek ‘ patterns of intention’, ‘ a representation of
reflection or rationality purposefully at work on circumstances ’.93 After all, Hevelius,
like other ‘ makers of pictures ’, ‘ is a man addressing a problem of which his product is a
finished and concrete solution ’.94
Examining Hevelius’s images in their historical and social context – after the come-
tary observations and during the escalating tension over telescopic sights, circulating
among a far-flung network in which status played a role in the struggle for epistemo-
logical legitimacy – can help us to locate the relevant problem the images were meant to
address and to catch a glimpse of the intent, as opposed to the eventual outcome, of
his visual strategy. Such an approach opens up rich opportunities for the analysis of
visualizations both as resources crafted by participants to address issues of concern and
as contested objects over which actors vie for interpretative authority. It is perhaps thus
that the images in Machina Coelestis provide a window into the seventeenth-century
observatory after all, revealing a space in which the politics of a broader network are
locally negotiated, where the eruption of controversy requires swift reputation man-
agement, and where even images of instruments can be instrumental.

92 The strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge requires that the analyst assume sym-
metry between the sides of a scientific debate, so as not to suggest post hoc that one side failed because it was
‘unscientific’, but rather to focus on the social factors that contributed to one or another group’s success. See
David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery, 2nd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
93 Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1985, p. 36.
94 Baxandall, op. cit. (93), pp. 14–15.