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

New solar telescope could hurt UA, shut facility on Kitt Peak Arizona Daily Star "We have lots of resources here, a long history of commitment to telescope work, spacecraft missions, a lot of strength here. We have a commitment to doing ... The sun like it's never been seen before!KOLD-TV all 28 news articles »

UCSB Art Professor to Show Work at Winter Olympics Digital Art Exhibition UC Santa Barbara On one screen, an infrared camera in the gallery space sequentially replays the history of the telescope's movements. At the same time, it records the ...

IPWatchdog.com

How Private Investigators Help Patent Litigators IPWatchdog.com In one case, counsel for a manufacturer needs to obtain a multi-million dollar telescope so engineers can figure out whether one of its microchip components ...

Geoffrey Burbidge, Who Traced Life to Stardust, Is Dead at 84 New York Times A large man with an even larger voice, Dr. Burbidge was one of the last surviving giants of the postwar era of astronomy, when big telescopes were sprouting ... and more »

al.com (blog)

Super Bowl ad review: Betty White, Stevie Wonder win the evening al.com (blog) They partied hard until what they thought was a giant asteroid hit the lens of their telescope with a little plink. And then they partied some more. ... and more »

Birdbooker Report 104 ScienceBlogs (blog) SUMMARY: In 1936, Albert Einstein predicted that gravitational distortions would allow space itself to act as a telescope far more powerful than humans ... and more »