[3] See Dreyer's article on these instruments in _Copernicus_, Vol. I. They were stolen by the Germans after the relief of the Embassies, in 1900. The best description of these instruments is probably that contained in an interesting volume, which may be seen in the library of the R. A. S., entitled _Chinese Researches_, by Alexander Wyllie (Shanghai, 1897).
[4] Sir George Airy was very jealous of this honourable title. He rightly held that there is only one Astronomer Royal at a time, as there is only one Mikado, one Dalai Lama. He said that His Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, His Majesty's Astronomer for Scotland, and His Majesty's Astronomer for Ireland are not called Astronomers Royal.
[5] _Annals of the Cape Observatory_, vol. x., part 3.
[6] The parallax of the sun is the angle subtended by the earth's radius at the sun's distance.
[7] A. R. Hinks, R.A.S.; _Monthly Notices_, June, 1909.
Accounts of wonderful optical experiments by Roger Bacon (who died in 1292), and in the sixteenth century by Digges, Baptista Porta, and Antonio de Dominis (Grant, _Hist. Ph. Ast_.), have led some to suppose that they invented the telescope. The writer considers that it is more likely that these notes refer to a kind of _camera obscura_, in which a lens throws an inverted image of a landscape on the wall.
The first telescopes were made in Holland, the originator being either Henry Lipperhey,[1] Zacharias Jansen, or James Metius, and the date 1608 or earlier.
In 1609 Galileo, being in Venice, heard of the invention, went home and worked out the theory, and made a similar telescope. These telescopes were all made with a convex object-glass and a concave eye-lens, and this type is spoken of as the Galilean telescope. Its defects are that it has no real focus where cross-wires can be placed, and that the field of view is very small. Kepler suggested the convex eye-lens in 1611, and Scheiner claimed to have used one in 1617. But it was Huyghens who really introduced them. In the seventeenth century telescopes were made of great length, going up to 300 feet. Huyghens also invented the compound eye-piece that bears his name, made of two convex lenses to diminish spherical aberration.