Oh, would it not be absurd if there was no objective state?
What if the unobserved always waits, insubstantial,
till our eyes give it shape?

— Peter Hammill

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.