In that spectacle-making center he may have picked up knowledge in the art of lens grinding[2] and later would construct a magic lantern and a camera obscura.

In October 1610 Drebbel and his family moved to Prague on invitation of Roman-German Emperor Rudolf II, who was preoccupied with the arts, alchemy and occult sciences.

When in 1611 Rudolf II was stripped of all effective power by his younger brother Archduke Matthias, Drebbel was imprisoned for about a year.

It is quite possible that he learned the art of glass grinding at this time from Drebbel, and that he passed this knowledge to his second son Christiaan Huygens, who became a prominent Dutch mathematician and scientist.

The English natural philosopher Robert Hooke may have learned the art of glass grinding from his acquaintance Johannes Sibertus Kuffler, the son-in-law of Drebbel.

[5] Towards the end of his life, in 1633, Drebbel was involved in a plan to drain the Fens around Cambridge, while living in near-poverty running an ale house in England.

He also wrote essays about his experiments with air pressure and made beautiful engravings; including The Seven Liberal Arts on a map of the city of Alkmaar.

He was known for his Perpetuum Mobile, built an incubator for eggs and a portable stove/oven with an optimal use of fuel, able to keep the heat on a constant temperature by means of a regulator/thermostat.

He designed a solar energy system for London (perpetual fire), demonstrated air-conditioning, made lightning and thunder ‘on command’, and developed fountains and a fresh water supply for the city of Middelburg.

He was involved in the draining of the moors around Cambridge (the Fens), developed predecessors of the barometer and thermometer, and harpsichords that played on solar energy.

Drebbel's most famous written work was Een kort Tractaet van de Natuere der Elementen[8] (A short treatise of the nature of the elements) (Haarlem, 1621).

[10] Drebbel invented a chicken incubator and a mercury thermostat which automatically kept it stable at a constant temperature;[11] one of the first recorded feedback-controlled devices.

[14][15] Drebbel is credited with developing an automatic precision lens-grinding machine, improved telescopes, the first compound microscope ('lunette de Dreubells'), camera obscura, laterna magica, and Dutch or Batavian tears One of the optical devices some historians believe Drebbel invented when he was working for the Duke of Buckingham was the compound microscope.

In 1624 Galileo saw Drebbel's design for a microscope in Rome and created an improved version of it to send to Federico Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei, who used it to illustrate Apiarum, his book about bees.

A small leatherclad submersible surfaces off the coast of England, and the top opens clamshell-wise revealing Cornelis Drebbel and the Duke of Buckingham.