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Cordell Hull
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Hans Lippershey patented binoculars2.10.1608

Wikipedia (26 Sep 2013, 14:22)

The earliest known working telescopes appeared in 1608 and are credited to Hans Lippershey. Among many others who claimed to have made the discovery were Zacharias Janssen, a spectacle-maker in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar. The design of these early refracting telescopes consisted of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. Galileo used this design the following year. In 1611, Johannes Kepler described how a telescope could be made with a convex objective lens and a convex eyepiece lens and by 1655 astronomers such as Christiaan Huygens were building powerful but unwieldy Keplerian telescopes with compound eyepieces. Hans Lippershey is the earliest person documented to have applied for a patent for the device.

Isaac Newton is credited with building the first "practical" reflector in 1668 with a design that incorporated a small flat diagonal mirror to reflect the light to an eyepiece mounted on the side of the telescope. Laurent Cassegrain in 1672 described the design of a reflector with a small convex secondary mirror to reflect light through a central hole in the main mirror.

The achromatic lens, which greatly reduced color aberrations in objective lenses and allowed for shorter and more functional telescopes, first appeared in a 1733 telescope made by Chester Moore Hall, who did not publicize it. John Dollond learned of Hall's invention and began producing telescopes using it in commercial quantities, starting in 1758.

Important developments in reflecting telescopes were John Hadley's production of larger paraboloidal mirrors in 1721; the process of silvering glass mirrors introduced by Léon Foucault in 1857; and the adoption of long lasting aluminized coatings on reflector mirrors in 1932. Almost all of the large optical research telescopes used today are reflectors.

The era of radio telescopes (along with radio astronomy) was born with Karl Guthe Jansky's serendipitous discovery of an astronomical radio source in 1931. Many types of telescopes were developed in the 20th century for a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays.


The first known telescopes

The practical exploitation of the instrument was certainly achieved and came to public attention in the Netherlands at about 1608, but the credit of the original invention has been claimed on behalf of three individuals: Hans Lippershey and Sacharias Jansen—spectacle-makers in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar (also known as Jacob Adriaanszoon). Hans Lippershey was credited with creating and disseminating designs for the first practical telescope—later applying to the States-General of the Netherlands on October 2, 1608, for a patent for an instrument "for seeing things far away as if they were nearby," (beating Jacob Metius's patent by a few weeks). Lippershey failed to receive a patent since the same claim for invention had been made by other spectacle-makers. Lippershey was handsomely rewarded by the Dutch government for copies of his design. Sacharias Jansen's design for a telescope may have pre-dated Lippershey and Metius, but the invention was never widely publicized.

The original Dutch telescopes were composed of a convex and a concave lens—telescopes that are constructed this way do not invert the image. Lippershey's original design had only 3x magnification. Telescopes seem to have been made in the Netherlands in considerable numbers soon after the date of their invention, and rapidly found their way all over Europe.

Galileo happened to be in Venice in June 1609 and there heard of the "Dutch perspective glass" by means of which distant objects appeared nearer and larger. Galileo states that he solved the problem of the construction of a telescope the first night after his return to Padua from Venice and made his first telescope the next day by fitting a convex lens in one extremity of a leaden tube and a concave lens in the other one. A few days afterwards, having succeeded in making a better telescope than the first, he took it to Venice where he communicated the details of his invention to the public and presented the instrument itself to the doge Leonardo Donato, who was sitting in full council. The senate in return settled him for life in his lectureship at Padua and doubled his salary.

Galileo devoted his time to improving and perfecting the telescope and soon succeeded in producing telescopes of greatly increased power. His first telescope magnified three diameters, but he soon made instruments which magnified eight diameters and finally, one that magnified thirty-three diameters. With this last instrument, he discovered in 1610 the satellites of Jupiter and soon afterwards the spots on the sun, the phases of Venus, and the hills and valleys on the Moon. In this last achievement he now appears to have been preceded by Thomas Harriot who made the first drawings of the moon with the aid of a telescope in July 1609. Galileo demonstrated the revolution of the satellites of Jupiter around the planet and gave rough predictions of their configurations, proved the rotation of the Sun on its axis and established the general truth of the Copernican system as compared with that of Ptolemy. Galileo's instrument was the first to be given the name "telescope". The name was invented by the Greek poet/theologian Giovanni Demisiani at a banquet held on April 14, 1611 by Prince Federico Cesi to make Galileo Galilei a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. The word was created from the Greek tele = 'far' and skopein = 'to look or see'; teleskopos = 'far-seeing'.

These brilliant achievements, together with Galileo's immense improvement of the instrument, overshadowed to a great degree the credit due to the original inventor, and led to the universal adoption of the name of the Galilean telescope for the form of the instrument invented by Lippershey.

   
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