Conventional wisdom says that Dutchman Hans Lippersheyinvented the telescope in 1608, but legend has it that the device was really invented three years earlier by kids playing with lenses in a spectacle-maker’s shop. That kind of stuff used to happen in the days before the Xbox.
Early telescopes sold like mad to merchants, who used them to spot approaching trade ships in hopes of beating out competitors.
Telescopes gave rise to the first high-speed telecommunications networks: spyglasses that were used to relay semaphore signals from miles away.
Galileo was the first to turn the telescope skyward, leading to the discovery of Jupiter’s satellites and craters on the moon. Less cleverly, he also pointed his telescope at the sun, which may have triggered his later blindness.
Ireland’s "Leviathan of Parsonstown" a 40-ton reflecting telescope built by the Earl of Rosse in 1845, was the world’s largest for seven decades. But wet ...
