THE PLAYERS > Cornelis Drebbel > the real-life inspiration for Francis Bacon’s vision of a new operative science as a civic good

First Published:  November 2012
Revised (substantive):  1 June 2021

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The famous Jacobean inventor, Cornelis Drebbel (1572–1633), personified the Baconian ideal of natural philosophy in action. His alchemical perspective on the new technoscience was summed up in his motto, “Use Thy Gifts Rightly,” which was inscribed, along with Drebbel’s monogram, on his many instruments and inventions, ranging from: a perpetual-motion machine “representing the motion of the Heavens about the fixed earth,” air conditioning, an incubator, the thermometer, “an instrument to sink ships,” the first microscope, and several different types of camera, to the first sea-worthy submarine, which in 1620 traveled down the Thames from Westminster to Greenwich under the surface of the water, with an 8-person crew and 12 passengers kept alive by Drebbel’s mysterious on-board manufacture of breathable air, 150 years before the “discovery” of oxygen in the early 1770s. A gifted showman, Drebbel was one of the first to deploy natural magic and spectacle (the theater of science) to earn patronage, and to market himself and his inventions. His technological exploits and engineering feats were known across Europe, influencing successive generations of “projectors” and natural philosophers on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as inspiring the science fiction classics written by Sir Francis Bacon (New Atlantis, 1627) and Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle (The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, 1666).

My first webessay introducing Drebbel has been relocated at the subdomain known as Roses (click/tap on the link for “the motto of Cornelis Drebbel (1572–1633), advocating a wise use of technology & automation: ‘Use Thy Gifts Rightly’”). The brief webessay is designed to open in a small, floating 2nd window.

You can also access this brief illustrated introductory essay on Cornelis Drebbel (created 3/15/2015) directly from the annotated list of links at the sitemap for the subdomain Roses​.Communicating​By​Design​.com.

Further discussion of Drebbel was added in June 2018 to my prefatory remarks for Roses’ digital edition (2014) of Thomas Tryon’s The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey (1684). This brief amendment of a blog entry originally posted 5/9/2014 (with continuing interpolations, due to avid interest in historical matters relating to gun rights & gun control as a public health issue in the U.S.) focuses on Drebbel’s contributions to military contracting and his little-known colonial connections.

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