Willem Janszoon Blaeu

Jean-Pierre Luminet

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arXiv · 1503.08327

Willem Janszoon Blaeu

Jean-Pierre Luminet

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Abstract

This article describes the life and work of Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), who founded one of history's greatest cartographic publishing firms in 1599. Mostly renowned as a cartographer, he also made terrestrial and celestial globes, various instruments such as quadrants, a planetarium and a tellurium. He invented mechanical devices for improving the technics of printing. As an astronomer, a former student of Tycho Brahe, Willem Blaeu made careful observations of a moon eclipse, he discovered a variable star now known as P Cygni, and carried out a measurement of a degree on the surface of the earth (as his countryman Snell did in 1617).

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Jean-Pierre Luminet. 2015-03-28. Willem Janszoon Blaeu. https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.08327

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