Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [134]
In December Moray enlarged on this description in response to a further enquiry from Huygens. By now Hooke had built a prototype, which he had shown to the Royal Society:
Mr. Hooke’s machine is set up and I will keep you informed as to the success of this invention, and of all the details of its structure, if it warrants the effort of describing it to you. Concerning moulds or forms, he claims not to use any. But if it turns out to be necessary to use moulds to give initial shape, and then to polish them, as you suggest, on [an iron] circle, be assured that I will keep you informed. But it looks as if the circles will shape the lenses much more quickly than moulds could do, and so moulds are unnecessary, and as you told me, Campani does not use them at all.28
Huygens copied at least one of these letters to Auzout, keeping him up to date with the information Moray was supplying, in connection with Auzout’s interest in Campani’s machine.29 He also made a note to himself that the use of the iron circle was an exceptionally good idea, and one that he would consider incorporating into an equivalent machine himself, which in typical Huygens fashion he subsequently did.30 At the end of December he devoted a whole letter to Auzout to ‘explaining the iron circle for working lenses’.31 A minute for another letter to Auzout, written on 15 January 1665, shows that they were still discussing refinements to the circle.32 From his further correspondence with Moray it is clear that by now Huygens had built his own prototype machine, and was experimenting with Hooke’s ‘iron circle’.33
Here, as in the case of the balance-spring watch, we have Christiaan Huygens – eager for recognition in the new Paris Académie – absorbing technical detail gathered from informants in London, and incorporating it in his own scientific instruments without acknowledgement. This is precisely the period during which Hooke later accused Oldenburg and Moray of having leaked details of his balance-spring watch to Huygens, and Huygens of having adapted his own prototype watches accordingly.
Hooke was entirely unaware of this correspondence. He knew nothing of the swift transmission to Holland (and thence to Paris) of material he was presenting to the Royal Society in his official capacity as its recently appointed Curator of Experiments.34 In Moray’s eagerness to be seen by Huygens to be fully au fait with new scientific developments in England, he freely communicated construction details of Hooke’s lens-grinding machine, which an expert instrument-designer like Huygens could readily seize upon and adapt. So Moray was transmitting troubling levels of detail concerning a patentable machine, in whose development there was already significant European competition, to his friend Huygens, who in turn discussed technical details with Auzout.
Meanwhile, Oldenburg replied to Auzout’s letter of 22 June 1665 on 23 July, detailing Hooke’s further rebuttals of Auzout’s continuing refusal to accept the practicality of the lens-grinding machine. In view of Auzout’s lack of knowledge of English, and Hooke’s of French, Oldenburg offered himself as epistolary intermediary: ‘If you wish, I will be the go-between, since you do not know enough English to write to him nor he enough French to reply.’35
But all was not as it seemed. For by 15 July Hooke and the other curators had been instructed to move out of London, to Epsom, in the company of John Wilkins and William Petty, to continue Royal Society experiments safely away from risk of the plague.36 Even if Oldenburg had shown Hooke Auzout’s second letter before he left, there is nothing to suggest that Hooke either