Four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei first demonstrated his 3x telescope, which was based on vague descriptions of the first telescope made by Hans Lippershey in the Netherlands the previous year. Although this magnification is absurdly low, Galileo improved upon his designs and created telescopes powerful enough to see the four largest moons of Jupiter (subsequently named the Galilean moons in his honor), to discover that the moon is covered in craters, and eventually to discover that the earth revolved around the sun. (He was forced by the Church to recant this heretical statement and spend the rest of his days under house arrest.)I got my first (and only) telescope for Christmas when I was eleven. It was a simple, cheap affair, but it was at least as powerful as most of Galileo's. Because one night, through my telescope, I could see the Galilean moons of Jupiter from my front yard in the middle of Las Vegas, Nevada. (Thanks to my (much smarter) little brother for setting it up and finding the moons for me.)
It is a little mind-boggling how prevalent and inexpensive technology has become in our time. I'm reading Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts", and it is humbling to realize how those men trusted their lives to 1960s era technology--machines with computing power now replicated in a handheld telephone or digital watch. Although my daily life is saturated with technology, I usually only notice it enough to get irritated by it.
A quadricentennial anniversary is a good chance to stop and think about how wonderful our technological world is. Happy birthday, Galileo's telescope!
(P.S. This is my 100th post. Happy 100th!)
