Cornelius Drebbel
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Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel (Alkmaar, 1572 - London, November 7, 1633) was the Dutch inventor of the first navigable submarine in 1620.
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[edit] Biography
Drebbel had elementary education (which included Latin) but no university education. In youth he was apprenticed to the famous engraver Hendrick Goltzius in Haarlem. In 1595 Drebbel married Sophia Jansdochter, one of Goltzius' younger sisters. In the same year he settled at Alkmaar, where he devoted himself to engraving and publishing maps and pictures. In 1604 King James I of England received Drebbel at his court and became his patron.
In 1609 he was given rooms at Eltham Palace to display his inventions. These included an astronomical clock which was powered by atmospheric pressure changes and thus required no winding (later duplicated in the 1760s by James Cox in his timepiece). He also publicly demonstrated a cooling machine in Westminster Hall.
[edit] Drebbel's legacy
Drebbel became famous for his 1619 invention of a microscope with two convex lenses. It was the first microscope with two optical lenses.
He also built the first navigable submarine in 1620 while working for the British 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). This submarine was tested many times in the Thames, but never used in combat.
Drebbel's most famous written work was Ein kurzer Tractat von der Natur der Elementen (Leiden, 1608). He was also involved in the invention of mercury fulminate.[1]
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.
It has also been speculated that Drebbel made use of a way to produce oxygen, possibly from a nitrate. The most reliable source suggesting this 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.
Near the end of his life, in 1633, Drebbel was living in virtual poverty running an ale house in England.
[edit] Dye
While making a coloured liquid for a thermometer Cornelius dropped a flask of Aqua regia on a tin window sill, and so , as the story goes, discovered that stannous chloride makes the color of carmine much brighter and durable. Though the inventor himself never made much money from his work, his daughters Anna and Catharina and his son-in-laws Abraham and Johannes Sibertus Kuffler set up a very successful dye works. The recipe for the "Red of the Kufflers" was kept a family secret and the new bright red color was all the rage in Europe.
[edit] Drebbel in popular culture
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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.
[edit] External links
- Drebbel Institute for Mechatronics: Who was Cornelis J. Drebbel?
- Cornelius Drebbel:inventor of the submarine
- Cornelis Drebbel (1572 - 1633)
- Drebbel's submarine
[edit] Sources
- A Perfect Red, Amy Butler Greenfield,Harper Collins, 2005, ISBN 0060522755
- BBC bio)
