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In 1597 Galileo invented his first commercial scientific instrument:
the military and geometric compass. It took two years of experimentation
and modification of the beta version until in 1599 it was ready for market.
The finished compass functioned as an early pocket calculator: it could
compute compound interest and monetary exchange rates, extract square
roots and perform other complex calculations, such as the determination
of the proper amount of charge for any size cannon. Shipwrights in Venice
used it to develop and test scale models of new hull designs before building.
It was, in short, a new technology that changed everything.
Initially Galileo built the compasses himself. Then, in an early form of
incubation, he hired a craftsman and moved him and his family into
his own house. The craftsman worked for a small salary, room and board for
his family and a profit share in the proceeds of the sale of the compass -- he received two-thirds of the purchase price of the finished instruments.
Such a 2/3 -- 1/3 division of the sale proceeds in itself created little upside
for Galileo. Galileo was, however, not only a scientist and inventor, he was
also an entrepreneur. He recognized that the real value lay not in the physical
object, but in the information necessary to operate it: he therefore sold the
compass for five scudi, but charged twenty scudi to teach the purchaser how
to operate it! As he learned the business he moved from in-person tutorials
to handwritten manuals to a published booklet entitled Operations of the
Geometric and Military Compass of Galileo Galilei, Florentine Patrician and
Teacher Mathematics in the University of Padua.*
* From Sobel, Galileo's Daughter, p. 26 (New York 2000)
Image reproduced with the kind consent of the Istituto e Museo di Storia
della Scienza, Florence.
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