page_title: Giambattista della Porta
section_title: Technological contributions
hierarchical_section_title: Giambattista della Porta / Technological contributions
caption_attribution_description: English: A still, shown on page 28 of De distillatione lib. IX&#160;: quibus certa methodo, multiplicique artificio, penitioribus naturae arcanis detectis, cu ius libet mixti in propria elementa resolutio, perfecte docetur by Giambattista della Porta, 1535?-1615. Romae&#160;: Ex Typographia Rev. Camerae Apostolicae, 1608.
context_page_description: Giambattista della Porta, also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta, was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation.
  Giambattista della Porta spent the majority of his life on scientific endeavors. He benefited from an informal education of tutors and visits from renowned scholars. His most famous work, first published in 1558, is entitled Magiae Naturalis. In this book he covered a variety of the subjects he had investigated, including occult philosophy, astrology, alchemy, mathematics, meteorology, and natural philosophy. He was also referred to as "professor of secrets".
context_section_description: His interest in a variety of disciplines resulted in the technological advances of the following: agriculture, hydraulics, Military Engineering, instruments, and pharmacology. He published a book in 1606 on raising water by the force of the air. In 1608 he published a book on military engineering, and another on distillation.
  Additionally, della Porta perfected the camera obscura. In a later edition of his Natural Magic, della Porta described this device as having  a convex lens. Though he was not the inventor, the popularity of this work helped spread knowledge of it. He compared the shape of the human eye to the lens in his camera obscura, and provided an easily understandable example of how light could bring images into the eye.
  Della Porta also claimed to have invented the first telescope, but died while preparing the treatise (De telescopiis) in support of his claim. His efforts were also overshadowed by Galileo Galilei's improvement of the telescope in 1609, following its introduction by Lippershey in the Netherlands in 1608.
  In the book, della Porta also mentioned an imaginary device known as a sympathetic telegraph. The device consisted of two circular boxes, similar to compasses, each with a magnetic needle, supposed to be magnetized by the same lodestone. Each box was to be labeled with the 26 letters, instead of the usual directions. Della Porta assumed that this would coordinate the needles such that when a letter was dialed in one box, the needle in the other box would swing to point to the same letter, thereby helping in communicating.
caption: Chemical apparatus for a still from De distillatione, 1608
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