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Time Line of Telescopes
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The first telescope
The first telescope, which was refracting, was invented by Hans Lippershey in 1608. He was a German-born, Dutch lens maker who created the telescope for military purposes. Since Lippershey was a lens expert, he used two lens to refract the light and create the first known telescope shown. -
Galieo's improvements
Galileo was one of the first people to use Lippershey's telescope to observe the sky. After he experienced this, he improved the design and created the first astronomical telescope. It is also often recorded that the 1st telescope was Gaileo's astronomical telescope created in 1611. -
Bonaventura Cavalieri
Cavalieri published Specchio Ustoria (burning mirrors) in 1632. This book discusses the theory of parabolic mirrors and configurations for a reflecting telescope. It is similar to to the Gregorian and Newtonian designs and uses concave mirrors to function as convex lens. -
First Design on the Reflecting Telescope
James Gregory created the first design of a reflecting telescope or the Georgian relflector. He called his first telescope Optica promota. This telescope used two mirrors circumventing chromatic aberration. -
Johannus Hevelius
Hevelius realized that the longer the telescope was, the sharper the image would be. This was because of the different colored points of light at the focal point. Thus, he created a 140 foot long telescope which make sharper images except for the fact that the 2 lens wouldn't stay aligned. -
Newton
Newton created the first successful reflecting telescope. It contains a concave spherical mirror, a flat angled secondary mirror, and a convex eyepiece lens. His telescope could magnify objects milllions of time which could not be done with just lens. -
Chester Moor Hall
Chester Moor Hall developed an achromatic lens in 1729 for the telescope. This involves two pieces of glass with different refractions. His telescope produced the sharpest image thus far in all telescope history up to that point. -
Sir William Herschel
Sir William Herschel created a 40 foot long telescope which was 4 feet in diameter. This is when reflector telescopes began becoming popular again. This telescope used large mirrors that captured 1000 tiems more light than refractors; today we call them "light buckets". -
Leviathan of Parsonstown
Lord Rosse constructed a reflecting telescope in Ireland, 1845. This telescope was six feet in diameter using a primary mirror. This telescope allowed Rosse to discover the first spiral nebulae. -
The Cooke Triplet
H. Dennis Taylor patented a revoluntionary triple lens design for the telescope. It is called "The Cooke Triplet" and contains 3 different types of glass (2 types of flint, and one crown glass). These lens do not touch each other or in other words are air-spaced. -
Largest Refracting Telescope
This telescope was built in the Yerkes Observatory and was 40 inches. It remains the largest refracting telescope ever built, even today. Reflecting telescopes have been chosen more often since they use mirrors instead of lens since telescopes with mirrors can be constructed at greater sizes. -
Edwin Hubble
The Hook 100-inch telescope was created in 1917 in California. It first saw light at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Edwin Hubble made a significant discovery with this telescope; the Andromenda nebula lay beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. -
Hale Telescope
Russell Porter created the Hale Telescope in Palomar Mountain, California. We discovered much more about science in the 60 years we used it. We made key discoveries about galaxies and quasars with this telescope. -
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope was lifted into orbit by the space shuttle Discovery in April 1990. After two decades in the sky, it helped us discover more about the life and death of stars and the nature of our expanding universe. It has also undergone many improvements which extended its lifetime. -
Large Binocular Telescope
The Large Binocular telescope was created in Arizona, 2005, This telescope delivers 10 times shaper images than those of the Hubble Space Telescope. This LBT is part of a new generation of giant telescopes that carry the eye to the edge of the universe. -
Thirty Meter Telescope
A Telescope, called the Thirty Meter Telescope, is currently being developed and bulit in Hawaii and is said to be completed by the end of this decade. It is said that it will be the most advanced and powerful optical telescope yet. It is also said that it will be 12 times stronger than the Hubble Telescope.
