Accidents and blind luck: Science is studded with the salutary effects of chance, great feats achieved almost inadvertently. One might think that even the hobbyist, if alert, has a chance to get lucky. A Dutch
spectacle- maker in the seventeenth century, playing around, puts  two of his lenses together quite by accident, and Galileo Galilei, in Padua, hears word of a glass by means of which distant objects might be seen as distinctly as if they were nearby. He sets about to build his own
instrument and points it at the moon. In this new light Galileo sees that the moon isn’t smooth, but pocked and cratered, like the Earth
itself. He is entranced; he has seen something that no one else has ever looked upon. He takes his glass out night after night, in a fervor, even when the object of his gaze withholds itself. I waited for the next night with the most intense longing, but I was disappointed of my hope, for the sky was covered with clouds.

AUDIO