Daniel Schwenter

Daniel Schwenter, also written Schwender, born in Nuremberg on 31 January 1585 and dead at Altdorf near Nuremberg on 19 January 1636, was a German Orientalist, mathematician, inventor, poet and librarian, professor of oriental languages and mathematics at the University of Altdorf. His works include Delicia Physico-Mathematicae of 1636 and the Geometriae practicae novae et auctae tractatus I-IV, published after his death in 1641, which among other topics covers baculometry, the measuring of inaccessible distances with staves. As a linguist he was familiar with Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Aramaic and was an authority on Euclid. He is credited with developing in 1636 the scioptric ball, a universal joint that lets a microscope or telescope mounted on it be swivelled into any position, an invention inspired by his studies of the human eye.