Though Galileo is often quoted as the inventor of
telescope he was not in fact the real inventor. He
heard about a device made by a spectacle maker
in Flanders, through which one could watch the
ships far out at sea. It could show even small
details such as sailors climbing and rigging. He
heard that the device was made up of a pipe fitted
with lenses. From what he heard, he designed
and constructed one of his own, with a series of
lenses.
Though he was not the first to design a telescope,
he was undoubtedly the first to
use it to study the skies. Instead of merely
watching ships at sea, or the movements
of distant troops, he turned his
newly magnified sight towards the moon,
the stars and the planets.
His observations contributed greatly to
early astronomy. He stated that the moon
is not a smooth and perfect sphere as
was supposed by astronomers at the time
and that its surface is rugged; it has great
mountains and has large dark areas
which he called (wrongly) the moon’s sea. In 1910 Galileo published these
and his other observations in a book he called “The Messenger of the Stars”
