Telescope

OTHER-NAME: Looker

DATE INVENTED/BEGAN: 1608

PLACE INVENTED/BEGAN: Middelburg, Holland

CATEGORY: Technology

DISCIPLINE: Precision instrument

ASSESSMENT: The telescope radically changed our view of everything when it showed Galileo that the heavens were different from the religious view of them..

LANGUAGE: Dutch, Italian, then all European languages

Hans Lippershey*, Dutch lens-maker, is said to have produced a ‘looker’ for use on the battlefield but was turned down by Dutch ruler Prince Maurice of Nassau* on the grounds that binoculars would do a better job. By 1609 Galileo* had produced a copy of the ‘looker,’ named it a ‘telescope’ and was, for the first time, looking at the sky with it. His discovery that the Moon had mountains was the first step towards disproving the old religious view that heaven was perfect (i.e. no bumps and blemishes) and could not be examined by earthly instruments. He also saw that Venus had phases, and that Jupiter had satellites circling it – both these observations in contradiction of the belief that everything circled the Earth.

Galileo and Lippershey used a convex lens at the end of the telescope and a convex lens in the eyepiece. The concave lens gathered all the light from a distant object and focused it into a spot. The convex lens then took this focused light and spread it (magnified it) to cover the retina of the observing eye. With this technique Galileo magnified distant objects as much as thirty times.

ONELINER: The telescope

EXTRA-CONNECTIONS: None

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Encyclopedia Britannica

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescope

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelescope.htm

Wikipedia on Lippershey

Space.com: "Who Invented the Telescope? "Lauren Cox, July 13, 2013

Herschel, Lowell

Erik Washam "Lunar Bat-men, the Planet Vulcan and Martian Canals"Smithsonian Magazine

December 2010

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