Early Telescope Designers

 

Isaac Newton 1643 - 1727

In 1668 Isaac Newton constructed the world's first reflecting telescope. Or so the story goes. It might be more accurate to say that 1668 was the year that Newton introduced his telescope to the world-- the year he put reflectors on the map.

The idea had been around for several decades.In 1616 a Jesuit priest,Niccolo Zucchi, built a telescope using a bronze parabolic mirror in place of a glass lens. When, he didn't achieve the desired results, probably due to the poor mirror quality, Zucci abandoned the project.

Newton's theory of color and his studies in optics led him to conclude that acquiring light though a glass lens would always produce false color. The problem might eventually be fixed, but such corrections would always be necessary. Newton had read of Zuchi's project and hoped to show that light could be gathered by means of a mirror instead of a glass lens, thereby eliminating the chromatic aberration, or false color, that seemed to be inherent to refractor telescopes.

Isaac Newton wasn't himself much of a stargazer. He was no Charles Messier or Caroline Herschel. His greatest contributions to astronomy were in his theories of gravitation and his influence regarding the use of reflector telescopes for scientific research. To this day the most basic type of reflecting telescope sold is referred to as a "Newtonian Reflector."