Background

Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel was born c. 1572 in Alkmaar, Netherlands, in an Anabaptist family. His father, Jacob Jansz, a burgher of Alkmaar, was a landowner or farmer. Nothing is known of his mother.

Education

Drebbel probably had only an elementary education, learning to read and write Latin in his later years. As a young man Drebbel was apprenticed to the famous engraver Hendrik Goltzius and lived in his home in Haarlem.

Drebbel proved to be an apt pupil, as is shown by a number of extant engravings from his hand. In addition, he probably acquired an interest in and some knowledge of alchemy from Goltzius, who was an adept.

Career

In 1595 Drebbel settled at Alkmaar, where he devoted himself to engraving and publishing maps and pictures. He soon turned to mechanical inventions, for in 1598 a patent was granted to him for a pump and a clock with a perpetual motion. He is mentioned as having built a fountain for the city of Middelburg, in the province of Zeeland, in 1601; and in 1602 he was granted a patent for a chimney. About 1605 Drebbel moved to London. Apparently some of his mechanical inventions appealed to James I, and he was soon taken into the special service of Henry, prince of Wales, and was installed in the castle at Elpham.

Drebbel's fame as an inventor became well known on the Continent, and he was visited at Elpham by Emperor Rudolf II and by the duke of Württemberg. He was invited to visit Rudolf, and by October 1610 he was in Prague with his family. Drebbel spent his time at the court of Rudolf showing off his “perpetuum mobile” and probably devoting himself to alchemy. After Matthias, Rudolf’s brother, had conquered Prague and deposed Rudolf, Drebbel was imprisoned; through the intervention of Prince Henry, however, he was set free to return to England in 1613.

During the next several years Drebbel lived mostly in London, although there are indications that at various times he was on the Continent and again in Prague. About 1620 he began to devote himself to the manufacture of microscopes and to the construction of a submarine.

He became acquainted with Abraham and Jacob Kuffler, who with their two other brothers were to become his disciples. Abraham soon married Drebbel’s daughter Anna; and Johannes, another brother, married Katherina Drebbel in 1627. The four Kuffler brothers became agents and promoters for the microscopes and other instruments developed by Drebbel, Johannes being the one who did the most to promote Drebbel’s inventions after his death.

For the next several years Drebbel was employed by the British navy and was concerned mainly with the famous expedition to La Rochelle. In spite of the failure of the expedition to raise the siege, Drebbel continued to work for the navy for some time at a fairly high salary. From 1629 until his death Drebbel was extremely poor and earned his living by keeping an alehouse. He was also engaged in various schemes for draining land near London, but apparently none was successful.

Drebbel left very few writings of his own, and none of them is concerned with his inventions. His most famous work was Ein kurzer Tractat von der Natur der Elementum (Leiden, 1608), an alchemical tract on the transmutation of the elements. Later editions contain a description of his “perpetuum mobile.” Another treatise, De quinta essentia (Hamburg, 1621), is also alchemical in outlook and was written with the help of a friend. In it, Drebbel discusses extracts from metals, minerals, plants, and other materials and their use in medicine.

Achievements

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  Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel went down in history as one of the most noyable inventors of his time. He contributed greatly to the development of optics, chemistry, measurement, optics, and is remembered as the builder of the world's first operating submarine.
  
  His other notable inventions included the Perpetuum mobile. Many models of it were used, and Drebbel extended the basic idea to the operation of clocks. Probably his initial fame in England and Europe rested on this invention, which delighted the people of the time.
  
  Drebbel was an expert lens grinder; he made compound microscopes as early as 1619; and some of his biographers insist that he was the actual inventor of the microscope with two sets of convex lenses.
  
  Drebbel’s most important contribution in chemistry was his discovery of a tin mordant for dyeing scarlet with cochineal. It is said that the discovery was made by accident when some tin dissolved in aqua regia happened to fall into a solution of cochineal that Drebbel was planning to use for a thermometer.
  
  Among other chemical achievements attributed to Drebbel are the introduction into England of the manufacture of sulfuric acid by burning sulfur with saltpeter and the discovery of mercury and silver fulminates.
  
  Drebbel was honored on postage stamps issued by the postal services of both Mali and the Netherlands in 2010.
  
  A small lunar crater was named after him.
  
  The street "Cornelis Drebbelweg" in Delft, the Netherlands was named after him.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Tractat Oder Abhandlung Von Natur Und Eigenschafft Der Elementen 1723

Religion

No absolute information on Drebbel's religion is available; but his biographers have concluded that he was most likely an Anabaptist, since most of his friends and relatives were Anabaptists.

Personality

According to most of Drebbel’s contemporaries, he was a man of gentle manners, considered to possess good intelligence, to be sharp-witted, and to have many ideas about various inventions.

In the strict sense Drebbel was not a scientist but an inventor or practicing technologist. In certain inventions he made use, however, of well-established scientific principles. Unlike many of his predecessors who had been interested in technological inventions, he actually brought his inventions to the practical state, and his finished models worked.

Physical Characteristics: Drebbel was a light-haired and handsome man.

Connections

Drebbel married in 1595 one of Goltzius’ younger sisters, Sophia Jansdocther. They had at least six children, of whom four survived.

Father:

Jacob Jansz - Dutch

Spouse:

Sophia Jansdocther - German

Daughter:

Anna Drebbel - British

Daughter:

Katherina Drebbel - British

son-in-law:

Abraham Kuffler - British

son-in-law:

Jacob Kuffler - British

References

• Two Netherlanders
  1961
• A History of Chemistry
  1961