Product Evolution - The Telescope

The First Telescope

Oct 2, 1608

Hans Lippershey was a Dutch eyeglass maker who was the first to lay a patent on the telescope which he invented to magnify up to three times the size of far away objects. He simply used a concave lens and placed it over a convex lens and discovered it's magnifying properties. He then made a binocular version of it which became the first telescope. http://www.space.com/21950-who-invented-the-telescope.html

Galilean Telescope

Oct 2, 1609

Upon hearing the idea of the telscope, Galileo Galilei, an Italian engineer, immedietly invented his own version of it. He improved it greatly by bringing the magnification from 3X to 20X so that farther away items can be seen in the night sky. Galileo was also credited with making the telescope a key insturment for astronomy. Soon astronmers all around the world started using telescopes. http://www.space.com/21950-who-invented-the-telescope.html
http://www.scientus.org/timeline/telescope.html

The Great Fourty-Foot

Oct 2, 1789

Telescopes started growing in size as the years passed and were becoming very popular in the astronomy field. Sir William Herschel, a British astronomer, constructed a 40-foot telescope since it was believed the bigger the better it would be able to magnify. But it was eventually learnt that bigger sized telscopes were less effective. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/telescopes/telescopes-interactive

Leviathan of Parsonstown

Oct 2, 1845

The "Leviathan of Parsonstown" was another large telscope. But unlike Herschel's fourt-foot one, it was more effective and was a reflecting telescope (which has curved mirrors that reflect light to form an image at the eye). The constructor of this telescope was Lord Rosse who was an Anglo-Irish astronomer. With his six-foot in diamter primary mirrored telescope, he discovered the first spiral nebulae. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/telescopes/telescopes-interactive

The Largest Refracting Telescope

Oct 2, 1897

A 40-inch refracting telescope (one that gathers light, bends it, then sends it back to the focal point) was built at Yerkes Observatory. The construction of this telescope revealed that making the glass lense for large refracting telescopes was a challenge. From then on, only reflecting telescopes were bult in large sizes leaving the telescope at Yerkes Observatory the largest refracting telescope to this day. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/telescopes/telescopes-interactive

The Hooker 100-inch Reflector

Oct 2, 1917

Located at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, the Hooker telescope was the largest telescope in the world from 1917 to 1949. It was used by Edwin Hubble who made a conclusion that the universe went beyond the Milky Way after locating the Andromeda nebulae which lay outside the Milky Way galaxy. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/telescopes/telescopes-interactive

Hubble Telescope

Oct 2, 1990

The Hubble Space telescope, named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, was launched into a low orbit around Earth in 1990 and still operates to this day. It was the first major telescope put into space an not only magnified and took pictures of visible light. the Hubble telescope also was able to capture images of near ultraviolet and near infared light. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/story/index.html