The Telescope was Invented by Galileo

The telescope was invented in the year 1608 by the German/Dutch optician Hans Lippershey (1570?-1619?). It is actually not known whether it was Lippershey himself, his son, or a worker in Lippershey? Dutch optical shop who first stumbled across the discovery. Lippershey tried to market these first telescopes as military devices to the Dutch Government. Galileo, hearing about the invention through his correspondences with other scientists in Europe, built his first telescope in one night, sometime during the fall of 1609. Galileo also recognized the military significance of the telescope, but he also comprehended its scientific importance as a tool for expanding humankind's understanding of the universe. In this sense, he accelerated the growth of astronomy as a modern science and gave to it its most important research instrument.

Telescopes are Constructed to Produce Magnification

Telescopes are an extension of the human eye. Taken in this sense, a telescope's most important qualification is to gather light. An object too faint to be seen by the unaided eye must first be made bright enough to be seen before it can be studied. This has always been the main function of any telescope--to gather light, not to magnify an image. Every time the magnification of a particular telescope is doubled, the field of view and image brightness decrease to 1/4 of their original values. It is possible to magnify an image into invisibility, or to produce empty magnification, a condition where the image is magnified to a point where no further increase in the amount of detail can be revealed. The light-gathering "power" of a telescope must, therefore, reign supreme in any consideration of a telescope's usefulness.