33 Facts About Cornelis Drebbel

Cornelis Drebbel was the builder of the first operational submarine in 1620 and an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, optics and chemistry.

Cornelis Drebbel was born in Alkmaar, Holland in an Anabaptist family in 1572.

Cornelis Drebbel became a skilled engraver on copperplate and took an interest in alchemy.

In 1600, Cornelis Drebbel was in Middelburg where he built a fountain at the Noorderpoort.

Around 1604 the Cornelis Drebbel family moved to England, probably at the invitation of the new king, James I of England.

Cornelis Drebbel worked there at the masques, that were performed by and for the court.

Cornelis Drebbel was attached to the court of young Renaissance crown-prince, Henry.

Cornelis Drebbel astonished the court with a demonstration of a perpetual motion machine, automatic and hydraulic organs and his optical Instruments.

When in 1611 Rudolf II was stripped of all effective power by his younger brother Archduke Matthias, Cornelis Drebbel was imprisoned for about a year.

Unfortunately his patron prince Henry had died and Cornelis Drebbel was in financial trouble.

Towards the end of his life, in 1633, Cornelis Drebbel was involved in a plan to drain the Fens around Cambridge, while living in near-poverty running an ale house in England.

In keeping with traditional Mennonite practice, Cornelis Drebbel's estate was split between his four living children at the time of his death.

Cornelis Drebbel registered several patents with the Dutch "Staten Generaal".

Cornelis Drebbel wrote essays about his experiments with air pressure and made beautiful engravings; including The Seven Liberal Arts on a map of the city of Alkmaar.

Cornelis Drebbel was involved in making theater props, moving statues and in plans to build a new theater in London.

Cornelis Drebbel worked on producing torpedoes, naval mines, detonators that used glass Batavian tears, and worked on fulminating gold as an explosive.

Cornelis Drebbel was involved in the draining of the moors around Cambridge, developed predecessors of the barometer and thermometer, and harpsichords that played on solar energy.

Cornelis Drebbel was involved in the invention of mercury fulminate.

Cornelis Drebbel invented a chicken incubator and a mercury thermostat which automatically kept it stable at a constant temperature; one of the first recorded feedback-controlled devices.

Cornelis Drebbel developed and demonstrated a working air conditioning system.

The story goes that, while making a coloured liquid for a thermometer Cornelis Drebbel dropped a flask of aqua regia on a tin window sill, and discovered that stannous chloride makes the colour of carmine much brighter and more durable.

Cornelis Drebbel is credited with developing an automatic precision lens-grinding machine, improved telescopes, the first compound microscope, camera obscura, laterna magica, and Dutch or Batavian tears.

One of the optical devices some historians believe Cornelis Drebbel invented when he was working for the Duke of Buckingham was the compound microscope.

The device appeared in Europe around 1620 with the earliest account being Dutch Ambassador Willem Boreel's 1619 visit to London where he saw a compound microscope in Cornelis Drebbel's possession, described as an instrument about eighteen inches long, two inches in diameter, and supported on 3 brass dolphins.

In 1621 Cornelis Drebbel had a compound microscope with two convex lenses.

The invention has many counter claims including Dutch spectacle-maker Johannes Zachariassen's claim that Cornelis Drebbel stole the idea from him and his father, Zacharias Jansen, and claims that Galileo Galilei used his telescope after 1610 as a type of compound microscope.

Cornelis Drebbel built the first navigable submarine in 1620 while working for the English Royal Navy.

Cornelis Drebbel manufactured a steerable submarine with a leather-covered wooden frame.

Between 1620 and 1624 Cornelis Drebbel successfully built and tested two more submarines, each one bigger than the last.

Cornelis Drebbel even took King James in this submarine on a test dive beneath the Thames, making King James I the first monarch to travel underwater.

Cornelis Drebbel has been honoured on postage stamps issued by the postal services of both Mali and the Netherlands in 2010.

Cornelis Drebbel was honoured in an episode of the cartoon Sealab 2021 during a submarine rescue of workers on a research station in the Arctic.

Cornelis Drebbel is drawn as a crazy inventor, similar to Q in the James Bond series.