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Cornelius Drebbel
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Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel (Alkmaar, Holland, 1572 - London, November 7, 1633) was the Dutch inventor of the first navigable submarine in 1620.
In 1595 he married Sophia Jansdochter.
619 Drebbel had brought a microscope with him to England. It was made by Zacharias Jansen, spectacle-makers at Middelburg, Holland, This fact was attested as he had shown this microscope to William Boreel, the Dutch Ambassador to England.
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Encyclopedia
Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel (Alkmaar, Holland, 1572 - London, November 7, 1633) was the Dutch inventor of the first navigable submarine in 1620.
In 1595 he married Sophia Jansdochter.
Drebbel's legacy
In 1619 Drebbel had brought a microscope with him to England. It was made by Zacharias Jansen, spectacle-makers at Middelburg, Holland, This fact was attested as he had shown this microscope to William Boreel, the Dutch Ambassador to England. Drebbel became famous for his invention in 1621 of a microscope with two convex lenses. This was the first microscope with two optical lenses. Several authors, including Christiaan Huygens assign the invention of the compound microscope to Drebbel. However, a Neapolitan, named Fontana, claimed the discovery for himself in 1618. Other sources attribute the invention of the compound microscope directly to Hans Jansen and his son Zacharias around 1595. In 1624 Galileo sent a Drebbel-type microscope to Federico Cesi (1585-1630), a wealthy noble man in Rome who used it to illustrate Apiarum, his book about bees.
He also built the first navigable submarine in 1620 while working for the English Royal Navy. Using William Bourne's design from 1578, he manufactured a steerable submarine with a leather-covered wooden frame. Between 1620 and 1624 Drebbel successfully built and tested two more submarines, each one bigger than the last. The final (third) model had 6 oars and could carry 16 passengers. This model was demonstrated to King James I in person and several thousand Londoners. The submarine stayed submerged for three hours and could travel from Westminster to Greenwich and back, cruising at a depth of from 12 to 15 feet (4 to 5 metres). Drebbel even took James in this submarine on a test dive beneath the Thames, making James I the first monarch to travel underwater. This submarine was tested many times in the Thames, but it couldn't attract enough enthusiasm from the Admiralty and was never used in combat.
To re-oxygenate the air inside one or more of these submarines, he likely generated oxygen by heating nitre (potassium or sodium nitrate) in a metal pan to make it emit oxygen. That would also turn the saltpetre into sodium or potassium oxide or hydroxide, which would tend to absorb carbon dioxide from the air around. That may explain how Drebbel's men were not affected by carbon dioxide build-up as much as would be expected. If so, he accidentally made a crude rebreather nearly three centuries before Fluess and Davis. Drebbel had been taught by the alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636) (perhaps when both were at the court of Rudolf II) that warming nitre produced oxygen (considered the food of life). The most reliable source suggesting the use of oxygen is a note by Robert Boyle. In 1662 Boyle wrote that he had spoken with an excellent mathematician, who was still alive and had been on the submarine, who said that Drebbel had a chemical liquor that would replace that quintessence of air that was able to cherish the vital flame residing in the heart.
Drebbel's most famous written work was Een cort Tractat van de Naturae de Elementen (A short treatise of the nature of the elements) (Leiden, 1608). He was also involved in the invention of mercury fulminate.. He had found out that mixtures of “spiritus vini” with mercury and silver in “aqua fortis” could explode
Drebbel also invented a chicken incubator and a mercury thermostat that automatically kept it at a constant temperature. This is one of the first recorded feedback-controlled devices. He also attempted to develop a working air conditioning system. The invention of a working thermometer is also ascribed to Drebbel
Near the end of his life, in 1633, Drebbel was living in virtual poverty running an ale house in England.
A small lunar crater Drebbel has been named after him.
A theory in Renaissance Magazine (issue #53, March 2007) speculates that the Voynich Manuscript may be Drebbel's cipher notebook on microscopy and alchemy.
Dye
While making a coloured liquid for a thermometer Cornelius dropped a flask of Aqua regia on a tin window sill, and as the story goes, discovered that stannous chloride makes the color of carmine much brighter and more durable. Though the inventor himself never made much money from his work, his daughters Anna and Catharina and his sons-in-law Abraham and Johannes Sibertus Kuffler set up a very successful dye works. The recipe for "color Kufflerianus" was kept a family secret and the new bright red color was all the rage in Europe.
Drebbel in popular culture
Drebbel was honored in an episode of the cartoon Sealab 2021 during a submarine rescue of workers on a research station in the Arctic. A German U-boat captain, who mysteriously "came with the sub", fired a pistol in celebration at the mention of Drebbel, to shouts of, "SIEG HEIL! CORNELIUS DREBBEL!" Also, on the Sealab 2021 Season 3 DVD, Cornelius Drebbel has two DVD commentaries devoted to the story of his life. However, the first is highly inaccurate and the narrator of the second gets easily distracted, so much so that he spends most of the eleven minutes of commentary talking about the languages of northern Europe and the domestic policies of the Swiss.
Also, a portrayal of Cornelius Drebbel and his submarine can be briefly seen in The Four Musketeers (1974). A small leatherclad submersible surfaces off the coast of England, and the top opens clamshell-wise revealing Cornelius Drebbel and the Duke of Buckingham.
In the Dutch Eighty Years War comic Gilles de Geus, Drebbel is a supporting character to the comics warhero Gilles. He is drawn as a typical crazy inventor, similar to Q in the Bond-series. His submarine plays a role in the comic.
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