"If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

— Carl Sagan

history

17th-century Brueghel paintings trace the early, mysterious history of the telescope

By kuky at Mon, 10/05/2009 - 10:38pm

Thanks to the much-heralded International Year of Astronomy, this much we know: Galileo used a telescope to observe the moon in 1609. But the inventor of the revolutionary resolutionary device remains unknown, and its early history is muddied by simultaneous discoveries and competing claims.