In 1608, Lippershey laid claim to a device that could magnify objects three times. His telescope had a concave eyepiece aligned with a convex objective lens. One story goes that he got the idea for his design after observing two children in his shop holding up two lenses that made a distant weather vane appear close.

Hans LipperheyLyman Spitzer

Galileo Galilei

8 Things You May Not Know About Galileo

• He was a college dropout.
• He didn’t invent the telescope.
• His daughters were nuns.
• Galileo was sentenced to life in prison by the Roman Inquisition.
• He spent his final years under house arrest.
• His middle finger is on display in a museum.
• NASA named a spacecraft for him.

Galileo had three children out of wedlock with Marina Gamba—two daughters and a son. The two young girls, whether by their illegitimate birth or Galileo’s inability to provide a suitable dowry, were deemed unfit for marriage and placed in a convent together for life.

Celatone

His inventions, from compasses and balances to improved telescopes and microscopes, revolutionized astronomy and biology. Galilleo discovered craters and mountains on the moon, the phases of Venus, Jupiter’s moons and the stars of the Milky Way.

Galileo’s conclusion from this thought experiment was that no force is needed to keep an object moving with constant velocity. Newton took this as his first law of motion.

Galileo wrote the “Starry Messenger” in 1610, which was based off his observations through his telescope. Galileo’s findings conflicted with the Church’s reliogous role in science. The Church saw Galileo as a threat and put him on trial in 1616 for supporting the heliocentric theory.

Aristotle’s Law of Motion: The natural state for an object is to be at rest. If you don’t push on an object, it will stop moving. Aristotle says that the natural state is at rest, Newton says that the natural state of an object is to not change its motion.