Talk:Campani compound microscope

Lead/history pretty bogus

Not sure why the lead is even a history (way outside WP:MOS). As a history its a mix of pretty strange WP:YESPOV statements, some puffery, and just plain wrong statements, including mixing up the invention of the telescope ("Janssen's microscope produced in 1608").

I see this article was up for deletion and I agree with that in that:

• there is no such thing as a "Galilean compound microscope" (no device is called that - that would be a beastie with a convex eyepiece and a concave objective.... we do not have that here),
• no references are presented supporting the existence of a "Galilean compound microscope",
• the attribution is totally wrong (attributed to Giuseppe Campani),
• the article puts forward a mostly unreferenced history of Galileo's microscope (this article is about Campani's microscope).

If this is a specific notable device sitting in a museum then it needs references supporting that.

Have removed the spoof microscope history and tried to focus it towards the device (sources anyone?). Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:59, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

The history stuff was based on a proposal at the AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Galilean compound microscope, that the article should be about Galileo's role in compound microscopes, and not about a museum piece. My feeling was that most of the keep !votes had that in mind, so I added a context section which could be developed towards that sort of article. The citations were there, feel free to ask about any of them. I do not have a strong opinion about the material (as you said, it largely duplicates material elsewhere) or about the subject of the article (except that the article should have a subject and by the end of the AfD there wasn't a consensus what that subject should be). Smmurphy^(Talk) 03:08, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

The subject of the article seemed clear (a device at the Museo Galileo), and that device only has one source (said museum's entry). The remainder of the article was speculation based on a claim refuted by the source (that this was a microscope built by Galileo).

The referencing in the old version was quite a bit off: Ref #1 claim of Janssen producing a microscope in 1608 doesn't fit what any historian says and the book is unreliable (not written by a historian), Ref #2 is wholly misquoted (that sequence of events was about the telescope, not the microscope). Ref #3 book is again unreliable (not written by a historian), makes claims based on Snijder tubes, and misses what most historians think - that Galileo's ochiolino was an improved copy of Cornelis Drebbel's compound microscope exhibited in Rome in 1624. Ref #5 misquotes Rustow, who notes this is a series of claims made by different people through history, not absolute fact as presented. It sorta goes on from there.

I read the AfD and there didn't seem to be consensus for an article about Galileo and the Compound Microscope. Since that history was off topic and a bit of a WP:CFORK I thought it better to delete it and focus the article to the device described. I note (also noted in the AfD) that this description of a single item at a museum was put up by that museum and may not be notable (other such entries have already been redirected). There may be a case to redirect this one as well (EDIT: but I will leave that to someone else to bring up for now). Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:48, 23 June 2017 (UTC)