From Earth-Bound to Satellite is a superb and richly illustrated collection of essays on the history of the telescope – from its debated roots in early seventeenth-century Holland to the Cold War, and from its use for fledgling astronomical and terrestrial viewing to modern delving into the deep skies. This second volume in Brill's Scientific Instruments and Collections series mainly stems from a symposium held at the XXXIII International Congress of History of Science and Technology at Budapest in 2009, in celebration of the quatercentenary of Galileo's first observations. It is dedicated to the memory of Inge Keil, who, as Alison Morrison-Low explains in the foreword, was a fine scholar and generous mentor whose final contribution appears within.

The telescope has always been an object shaped by competition as well as collaboration, as Sven Dupré emphasizes in the introduction. Networks of skill, knowledge and patronage allowed for its production and use – but commercial and political competition played pivotal roles as well. The essays in this volume explore such facets of the history of the telescope in a manner Dupré likens to the approach to the microscope taken by Marc Ratcliff and Dario Generali. Common themes which emerge include the importance of cities and of the presence of different crafts to the emergence of production, as well as geographies and transmission of skill.

Giorgio Strano first sheds light on the secretive telescope production of the early seventeenth century by way of a shopping list which Galileo jotted down before travelling to Venice, possibly in the pivotal year 1609. Amongst clothing and edibles are items which Strano links to the astronomer's development of his telescope. Inge Keil explores the life and business of another early telescope maker, Johann Wiesel (1583–1662) of Augsburg. Keil was able to piece together an impressive amount of information on such an early individual's stock, biography and prestigious international clientele. She also explores why early modern Augsburg was a particularly good location for an optical instrument-maker to set up shop. Huib Zuidervaart rounds out this picture of early telescope production by discussing seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century manufacture in the Dutch Republic. Zuidervaart provides a richly detailed guide to the known Dutch makers and to the uses and manifestations of their products. Interestingly, he attributes the surprising lack of early Dutch telescopes in collections to their having been undecorated, or Calvinist, in appearance.

Jim Bennett provides an informative look at key early modern approaches to lens grinding and publications thereupon, particularly during the eighteenth century. Bennett engages with influential grinders from Isaac Newton to William Herschel, and with their opinions of each other's methodologies. Gloria Clifton explores the networks of skill and clientele which lay behind manufacture and the gradual improvement of telescope technology from the seventeenth century into the nineteenth. Clifton's main examples are the networks centred upon the Royal Observatory, and other influential makers in the ever-expanding London trade. Richard Dunn draws evidence for the state of early modern telescope technology from related schemes which were submitted to the British Board of Longitude during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These included observing the Jovian moons in order to estimate longitude at sea, devices such as ‘marine chairs’ for steadying an observer, and changes to the design of the actual instrument.

Next James Caplan, a working astronomer who has been researching the Marseille Observatory, explores clockwork mountings for use with nineteenth-century telescopes. This is an illuminating account of a technology that was vital to the use of these instruments but which has often been ignored, in part because few survive intact. Clock drives were also later necessary to the success of long-exposure astronomical photography. Gudrun Wolfschmidt contributes a detailed account of the Carl Bamberg workshop in Berlin during the nineteenth century – when Britain began to cede supremacy in astronomical instruments to Germany – and of Askania AG into the twentieth century.

A chapter on wide-field photographic telescopes at Yale and Harvard during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, especially under Fred Whipple, was co-authored by Teasel Muir-Harmony, David DeVorkin and Peter Abrahams. They show how the invention of a technique to expose the nature of meteorites led to the expansion of astronomy and especially to its intersection with defence. Finally Robert Smith takes up that theme by exploring the Cold War development of space astronomy, particularly in the United States – a blatant example of telescopy emerging from both competition and collaboration. Smith concentrates upon the development of X-ray astronomy, the Hubble Space Telescope and photoreconnaissance satellites, and infrared space astronomy detectors.

This book was not intended to be a comprehensive account of this technology. As Dupré writes, it asks ‘different questions which add another layer to the existing histories of the telescope’ (p. xxiv). However, the contents and chronologies discussed hit many high points in European and North American telescopy while also exposing factors, technologies and actors which deserve further study. There are possible drawbacks to the collective format; for example, Huib Zuidervaart's essay is about three times as long as the others. However, I consider its rich contents well worth the imbalance. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book lies in its fifteen authors and editors being such well-known scholars of the history of scientific instruments. Many also come from backgrounds which value material culture, encouraging a strong focus on the production as well as the use of these instruments, and the melding of museology with historiography.