Giuseppe Campani
Giuseppe Campani (1635–July 28, 1715) was an Italian optician and astronomer who worked in Rome. Born in Castel San Felice near Spoleto, he became famous for making lenses and telescopes that were sent to cities like Florence and Paris. Campani was considered the best instrument maker of his time. His brother Matteo Campani-Alimenis helped grind and polish lenses for long-focus telescopes and also worked on clocks.
Campani was also a priest in Rome. Louis XIV ordered long-focus lenses for the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, with which Cassini discovered moons of Saturn. A telescope made by Campani was later acquired by Constantijn Huygens Jr., and in London in 1689 he had John Marshall make a new tube for it.
Campani conducted many of his own observations and corresponded with Cassini. He even argued with Eustachio Divini about who first observed the dark spots on Jupiter. He published papers in 1664–1666 describing his observations and telescope instruments.
In 1747, Campani’s workshop was donated to the Bologna Academy of Sciences. His telescopes ranged from about 6 to 15 meters in length. A 3-meter Campani telescope tested in 1871 showed good detail with about 20x magnification. A Campani tripod monocular microscope is kept at the Billings collection of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:27 (CET).