The beginnings of the telescope start at around 2560 BCE in ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyption artisans polished semi precious and precious stone, glass and rock to decorate Sarcophagi and other precious objects. Often these polished pieces were used to create "eyes" in statuary.

Since then glass and crystal objects have been ever more refined and polished. Inventors learned to better cut thinner and more exact sections of glass and to combine these pieces of glass in ways to reveal more unexpected vistas about the world around us. Eventually reflective or mirrored surfaces and refractive lenses, were developed.

Our telescope technology continues to become more complex and advanced. We are able to read vast ranges of the electro-magnetic specrum from infra-red to X-rays and beyond. And by placing powerful telescopes floating in space above us, we have expanded our window on the universe...

• 470 BCE - A Chinese philosopher named Mozi used concave mirrors to focus the sun's rays.
  
  
• 4 BCE - Water was used by Seneca the younger to magnify letters and words.
  
  
• 23 CE - Pliny the elder discovers that doctors used a crystal ball to focus the sun's light intensly enough to cauterize wounds. Both of these events are precusers of the telescope lens.
  
  
• Tenth Century CE - Viking pendants and jewelry made of Visby lenses, lenses made from rock crystal (quartz) probably originating from the Middle East, had magnifying properties.
  
  


• 1011-1021 - Ibn al-Haytham (also known as Alhazen) writes the Kitab al-Manazir or Book of Optics. He wrote about the effects of pinhole and concave lenses in his book, which was influential in the development of the modern telescope. The earliest evidence of "a magnifying device, a convex lens forming a magnified image," also dates back to his Book of Optics.



• 1520 - Englishman Leonard Digges, a mathematician, invents both the reflecting and refracting telescopes.
  
  
• 1608 - Dutchman Hans Lipperhay, a lens maker applies for a patent for his telescope design.
  
  
• 1609 - Galileo refines and improves Lipperhay's design and renames it first the 'Perspicillum' - then later changes the name of his device to "telescopium" in Latin. He went on to use his telescope to observe and champion Copernicus’s ideas of the order of the universe.
  
  
• 1616 - The reflecting telescope again makes an appearance as invented by Niccolo Zucchi.
  
  
• 1663 - A telescope with a parabolic primary mirror and an elliptical secondary mirror is created, this time by a Scottish mathematician named James Gregory.
  
  

Storm on Saturn Image captured by Hubble Telescope

• 1668 - Sir Isaac Newton designs a telescope incorporating a parabolic mirror and a flat diagonal secondary mirror.
  
  
• 1733 - The achromatic lens is created by Chester Moore Hall. This lens corrects for color abberations, allowing different wavelengths of light to be focused at the same spot.
  
  
• 1880 - The orthoscopic eyepiece is invented by Ernst Abbe, becoming the most common eyepiece for "amatuer telescopes."
  
  
• 1910 - George Ritchey and Henri Chretien invent the Ritchey-Chretien telescope that is used in many large astronomical observatories.
  
  
• 1930 - The Schmidt camera was designed by Bernhard Schmidt.
  
  
• 1937 - A telescope which could pick up everything from radio to X rays was created by Grote Reber.
  
  
• 1944 - Dmitri Maksutov creates the Maksutov telescope.
  
  
• 1962 - UK launches orbiting solar telescope. Solar Telescopes are used to study the sun.
  
  
• 1990 - The Hubble Telescope is launched into orbit.
  
  
• 2013 - The James Webb Space Telescope is due to be launched and take over "viewing the Universe" from the Hubble.

News About Telescopes and History

Space.com

New Space Telescope Mirrors Get Frosty Treatment
Space.com
... of the light spectrum to peer farther back into the universe's history than ever before. The telescope's mission is expected to cost about $5 billion. ...

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CBS News

Astronomers Discover Jupiter-Sized Brown Dwarf
CBS News
An international team is now using the telescope to complete a 300-star survey, the largest such survey to date, so hopefully more brown dwarfs will come ...

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Retro holiday in history
Mail & Guardian Online
Just as children make telescopes and binoculars of toilet-roll tubes, vacuum cleaner pipes and rolled-up scraps of paper, we are invited to suspend our ...

World-renowned astronomer Donald C. Backer dies at age 66
Canada Views
... the history of the universe,? said Heiles. As RAL director, Backer was deeply engaged in the laboratory's two major facilities, the Allen Telescope ...

The Hindu

Biggest and Brightest Star In History Discovered by UK Astronomer
Tonic
A team led by Paul Crowther, at the University of Sheffield in the UK, made the astonishing discovery using the Very Large Telescope at the European ...
R136a1: Monster star too big to be true?Christian Science Monitor

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NEWS.com.au

NASA's Kepler finds earth like planets may dominate galaxy
Examiner.com
The telescope, shown left courtesy of NASA, doesn't take those kinds of pictures. In fact it doesn't take pictures at all. ...
Exoplanet bonanza fuels excitementABC Science Online
Carnival of Space 164 - solar sails and earth sized exoplanets and a new ...Next Big Future (blog)

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