1622: Tycho Brahe

Endorsements

Publishers have always tried to attract buyers by placing the name of a famous person on a book's title page. Sometimes this person was responsible for writing the preface, but such is not the case with this almanac, which proudly mentions the name of the Danish astronomer and mathematician Tycho Brahe (1546-1601).

Copernicus

Whereas the great astronomers of the fifteenth century such as Peuerbach and Regiomontanus were convinced that the sun rotated around the earth, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) put an end to this notion. He asserted that the sun was in the centre of the universe, and he had the earth and the other planets circling around it. His most important work, De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was completed in 1530, but out of fear for reprisals from the Catholic Church it was not published until 1543, by Johannes Petreius in Nuremberg.

Tycho Brahe

One of the opponents of the theories of Copernicus was Tycho Brahe, who became famous for his accurate astronomical observations, first in the Uraniborg Observatory in Denmark and later in Prague, in collaboration with Johann Keppler (1571-1630). Brahe developed a theory in which the sun rotates around the earth, as Ptolemy had put forward, while the planets rotate around the sun. Johann Keppler used Brahe's observations and later discovered that the planets do not move in circles around the sun but in ellipses. It is therefore understandable that a publisher would want to alert his readers to the fact that this office almanac made use of the astronomical findings of a great astronomer.

Sayings

Naturally there was no room for unscientific astrological predictions. But we do find moralistic sayings in the calendar such as 'Houdt in alles goede maat, hoed u voor den overdaet' (February; Everything in moderation, and you preserve yourself from wastefulness) and ''s werelds grootheyt, 's werelts lust, baerd niet anders als onrust' (December; Worldly greatness and a worldly appetite only lead to trouble).

Lucasz Jansz. Sinck

Lucasz Jansz. Sinck was the first surveyor in the northern Netherlands to serve as a calculator of almanacs, which he did from 1606 until his death in 1622. Until that time this work was primarily carried out by doctors, mathematicians and astronomers. Even after his death and up until 1628, Sinck was listed as a collaborator on the title pages of many office almanacs.

Amsterdam

He worked together intensively with the Amsterdam publisher Broer Jansz, who produced almanacs for 45 years. Amsterdam office almanacs like these were issued in editions of a few thousand. Sales were not limited to Amsterdam alone, which numbered about 100,000 inhabitants in 1622, but also extended to merchants and regents in other Dutch cities.