Also 7 telloscope. [ad. It. telescopio or mod.L. telescopium, the former used by Galilei, 1611, the latter by Porta in Italy and by Kepler, 1613, f. Gr. τηλεσκόπ-ος far-seeing, f. τῆλε afar off, at a distance + σκοπ-εῖν to look, -σκοπ-ος looker: see -SCOPE. The earliest English examples are in the L. and It. forms.
Telescopio is frequent in letters of Galilei from 1 Sept. 1611, but does not appear to have been invented by him; J. B. Porta, member of the Roman Academy of the Lincei (to which Galilei also belonged), in a letter assigned to 1613, appears to attribute the name to Prince Cesi, founder and head of the Academy: ‘Telescopium multis ostendi (lubet hoc uti nomine a meo principe reperto)’ (Galilei Opere [1901] XI. 611). Galilei had previously, in 1610–1, used perspicillum, Kepler in 1610 perspicillum, conspicillum, specillum, penicillium.]
1. An optical instrument for making distant objects appear nearer and larger, consisting of one or more tubes with an arrangement of lenses, or of one or more mirrors and lenses, by which the rays of light are collected and brought to a focus and the resulting image magnified.
Telescopes are of two kinds: refracting, in which the image is produced by a lens (the object-glass), and reflecting, in which it is produced by a mirror or speculum; being magnified in each case by a lens or combination of lenses (the EYE-PIECE, q.v.). Large telescopes of both these kinds are used by astronomers. The smaller hand-telescopes are always refracting, and consist of two or more tubes made to slide one within another for convenience of packing into a narrow compass and for adjusting the lenses as required for focusing the image; cf. TELESCOPE v. 1.
[1619. Bainbridge, Descr. Late Comet, 19. For the more perspicuous distinction whereof I vsed the Telescopium or Trunke-spectacle.]
1648. Boyle, Seraph. Love, xi. (1663), 59. Galileo’s optick Glasses,… one of which Telescopioes, that I remember I saw at Florence.
1657. W. Rand, trans. Gassendi’s Life Peiresc, I. 143. Galilæus, by his newly invented Telescope had discovered certain great and wonderfull sights, concerning the Stars. Ibid. The cause of the effects of the Telescope, or Perspective-Glasse.
1671. Milton, P. R., IV. 42. By what strange Parallax or Optic skill or vision multiplyed through air, or glass Of Telescope.
1774. Mackenzie, Maritime Surv., I. iv. 27. Turn the Theodolite till, through the Telescope, you see the Pole A at the vertical Wire.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., ii. Mr. Pickwick … with his telescope in his great-coat pocket.
1842. Penny Cycl., XXIV. 163/2. It is … manifest that reflecting telescopes, or optical instruments containing combinations of mirrors and lenses, were known in England before the end of the sixteenth century.
1855. Brewster, Newton, I. iii. 59. Sir William Herschel … completed in 1789 his gigantic telescope, forty feet in focal length, with a speculum forty-seven and a half inches in diameter!
1865. ‘L. Carroll,’ Alice in Wonderland, i. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope!
1870. Emerson, Soc. & Solit., Art, Wks. (Bohn), III. 16. Dollond formed his achromatic telescope on the model of the human eye.
1875. R. Adamson, in Encycl. Brit., III. 221/2. He [Roger Bacon] certainly describes a method of constructing a telescope.
b. fig. and allusively.
1656. Owen, Mortification Sin, Wks. 1851, VI. 65. We see through a glass darkly…. It is not a telescope that helps us to see things afar off.
1666. J. Fraser, Polichron. (S.H.S.), 18. It [History] is indeed that telescope by which we see into distant ages.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 176, ¶ 11. Others are furnished by criticism with a telescope.
1885. J. K. Jerome, On the Stage, p. v. Now that … duty no longer demands that memory should use a telescope.
c. Astron. (Also in mod.L. form Telescopium.) Name (introduced by Lacaille in 1752) of a constellation south of Sagittarius.
2. attrib. and Comb., as telescope-maker, -stand, -tube; telescope-shaped adj.; also applied to various things consisting of or having parts which fit or slide one within another like the tubes of a hand-telescope (cf. TELESCOPIC 4), as telescope-bag, -chimney (on a steamboat), -joint, -rod, -table; also telescope-carp, a monstrous variety of goldfish, having protruding eyes; also called scarlet-fish; telescope-driver, a clockwork apparatus for driving an astronomical telescope so as to follow the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies and thus keep the same object continually in the field of view; so telescope-driving adj.; telescope-eye, an eye that can be protruded and retracted like a telescope-tube, as in gastropod mollusks; telescope-fish = telescope-carp; telescope-fly, a fly of the genus Diopsis, having the eyes on long stalks; telescope-shell, the long conical shell with numerous whorls of an Indian gastropod (Telescopium fuscum); telescope-sight, a small telescope mounted as a sight upon a firearm or surveying instrument, a telescopic sight.
1804. Shaw, Gen. Zool., V. 211. *Telescope Carp…. Scarlet-Carp, with protuberant eyes, all the fins half white.
1874. Sir E. Beckett, Clocks & Watches, 213. The following plan for a *telescope-driving clock…. A still simpler *telescope-driver.
1875. Zoologist, X. 4501. The so-called *‘telescope fishes’ are common gold-fishes with double tails and projecting eyes.
1882. Ogilvie, *Telescope fly, a dipterous insect of the genus Diopsis.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, *Telescope-maker, Telescope-stand.
1891. Const. MacEwen, 3 Women in Boat, 73. We began to fish. We had three little common Japanese *telescope-rods.
1867. Latham, Black & White, 76. In the *telescope-shaped jacketed guns.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., App., *Telescope-shell, the English name of a species of turbo, of a conic figure, with plane, striated, and very numerous spires.
1715. trans. Gregory’s Astron. (1726), I. 284. Instruments … furnished with *Telescope Sights.
1881. Young, Ev. Man his own Mechanic, § 763. A *telescope-table must be studied in all its parts and movements before any attempt can be made to mend or make one.
