Galileo in 1610, faced with criticism of his discoveries, decided to demonstrate the truth about his observations by making more instruments and providing them to his peers and sponsors as teaching tools (ref. 17) .  We are continuing his example today as a positive way to convey the value of the discoveries of science and to highlight  the institution of science as a means of revealing the truths about our world  through the Galileo experience.  Our replicas of Galileo’s telescopes are  beautiful, hand made works of art.  We believe them to be a credit to Galileo for they are precise, museum grade instruments.  We also offer cutaway models to demonstrate the principals of the optics and the very unusual interior construction of the telescopes.  We encourage museums, planetariums, serious collectors and those who so kindly donate instruments of this quality to their favorite museums and teaching institutions

Samples of the Media's Interest

One of our two replicas of Galileo's Telescope being filmed on set for its first public appearance on Cable TV From left to right are director of photography Boyd Estus of Heliotrope Studios Ltd., Hunter Ellis host of the History Channel's "Man Motion. Machines" Series and Rhoda and Jim Morris of scitechantiques.com co-maker of the telescope

Note the Camera/Telescope set-up for filming the image as actually seen through the replica of Galileo's telescope We had to make a special mount to couple the very fragile very rare 12 oz telescope to the very expensive 42 pound camera to give the TV audience a feeling for the image quality Galileo worked with as he scanned around the neighborhood through the astounding instrument that brought the "far away so much closer"

Filming one of the scenes of Jim Morris and Hunter Ellis chatting about Galileo's telescope and how it works

The crew Gathered together watching the monitor displaying the image from the telescope Third from the right is our Producer/ Writer of the History Channel 's Man Moment. Machine Julie Mirocha. Rhoda is taking the picture.

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Galileo's story on an international bases is  a well documented case study, reminding  us  that these  telescopes  stand as  symbols  of  a long held  prejudicial miss understanding against basic research. 
We are all victims  waiting on  the side lines while the various factions in this  debate  work out their differences so that we can get on with the basic scientific research and turn this knowledge  into ways that will give us   a fuller, healthier, safer life as it already has shown that it can do.

The authors suggest that Galileo---- this one man---- and his telescopes  represents in a simple, elegant  and dramatic and  important way,  all the aspects of what technology and its mistrusting antagonists are about in 1600 and to day. One is compelled to ask Isn't it the time for both sides to work together to gain a better understanding  of each others point of view with data so we can work out a compromise  that we can  resolve  this dilemma and  we can get on with the research we all so badly need.

There is a beautiful case study buried in  this 400 year old   story that is both unique and valuable because each phase of the complex and often hidden important business of doing  basic research is all  rolled into one type of instrument and one  scientist. All the tasks of doing science are being   played by  one actor, in a one act, one prop play   with  Galileo playing  all the parts. Today research is done by teams of scientist and  has  become very complicated to extract out the many steps needed to understand  how  discoveries are made and used i.e.  the business of  basic scientific research. Unfortunately the dialog for such a  play  is spread thought out the literature filled with errors of a personalized nature waiting to be complied into a single script  minus all the media melodrama that clouds the issues.

This web site suggest that Galileo's story as told through the telescopes can stands as a mile post  showing us what is going on today by looking at 1600 AD  and measuring our  progress  and understanding of this  prejudice  that sadly  still exist today, which we call the Galilean syndrome.

The Galilean Syndrome Galileo's telescopes  are especially important today because they stand out as  symbols  warnings  us to keep   constant vigil against those that would  turn us away from science, its methods and tools. The Pernicious Galilean Syndrome its always there! The support and funding of basic scientific research so vital to us in the U.S. and the world, has come under attack again by a few powerful, charismatic,  zealous, leaders  repeating the same mistakes of myopic  judgment  that  Galileo  had to contend with 400 years ago, In spite of science's success it is always vulnerable to influential misguided leaders ready to summon their followers to take our basic scientific research away from us. These followers go after their congresspersons threatening their reelection for supporting science. Although relatively small in number they are well organized have proven to be very effective. Scientist  can not solve  the  problems they are given without adequate funding. They need our help and support.  There are so few scientists compared to the world's population including the very active dissenters that their warnings and cries for help are too weak to be heard by the general public. The cure  for Pernicious Galilean Syndrome takes less than five minutes a year; Most of us do not appreciate that we are  automatically part of the science team.  We  don't need a degree in science or take courses in science to be a  very important contributor to the progress of

The Beautiful Home of Galileo's Telescopes science and their are allot of us on the team.  However, we do need to stop taking science for granted and we do need to  actively start supporting  it! As members of the science team we have a vital role. We need to bring to the attention of our congressman  the  critical need for our government to strengthen its  interest and support for  basic scientific research.   All aspects of our future depends on it. Yes most of us understand the value of basic scientific research.   Yes we are large in numbers, and want it supported, but we must be vigilant, contacting our congressman showing our support in numbers that at least match the dissenters. Galileo's famous and dramatic telescope story is repeating itself today and we as well as the dissenters are the victims of this Pernicious Galilean Syndrome. In the foto above is part of the team  Jim & Rhoda, best of  friends, husband and wife,  grandpa and grandma, physicist and chemist, hanging around  Galileo's neighborhood.  Here we are in front of  the extraordinary museum where Galileo Galilei's telescopes, his other famous instruments, and his index finger reside.  The museum lies on the banks of the beautiful Arno River in Florence.  Galileo  is  buried just down the street and  is still teaching science (and the danger of  Pernicious Galilean Syndrome) to the public visiting his stylish crypt in the  Santa Croce Church.  He and his telescopes are still in there fighting for science. Don't let him down. Join him in the fight More Detail on how you can help Ref.**

Click Here to see some detail on how one can help

2 nd. example, The Politics of Optics Galileo the Engineer and Entrepreneur

Scientifically the paper covered telescope IMSS2427 is the most important of the two existing telescopes because it shows us what a development ,(laboratory) instrument looked like. Still the pretty one covered with leather and gold IMSS 2428 holds most writers of science focus?
The challenges of replicating  Galileo's existing telescopes and judging his technical skills requires a  perspective of why he was building them and for whom he was building them. This knowledge is critical in judging Galileo's skills as a Scientist/ Engineer/Entrepreneur. (Yes we have to remember that Galileo was an entrepreneur earning monies to support his research and family needs just scientist do today.) The decorative red leather telescope and it negative lens with its limited field of view but upright image most likely was an experienced business decision on Galileo's part.  The red leather telescope should be  considered as  part of his  product line of technical instruments for sale or bartering. The very beautiful art work would hardly have  been put on one of his data gathering instrument for his own research. Its seemly compromised optical design  the poor field of view yet high magnification with a short over all length reflects  his customer needs not a design flaw from a lack of Galileo's skills in optical design as some have suggested in the literature.

1 ST. observation of the magic of lenses; The lens on your right of the above photo  is the kind of lens used as an eyepiece in a Galilean telescope. Look at the eye in the photo notice how much smaller the eye and face look through that eyepiece lens. Now Galileo found with measurements that the telescope becomes more powerful and makes distant things look bigger by selecting a lens for the eyepieces that makes things look smaller, " Smaller?" It doesn't make common sense that you would use a lens that makes things look smaller to get a telescope to make things look bigger. . Lets go through that once more if we used a lens that made the eye looks even smaller than the one in the photo the telescope that would make things through the telescope look even bigger. "Smaller is bigger" Hmmmmmmmmm? . 2 nd. observation of the magic of lenses: . The lens on your left is the kind of lens used as an objective. It goes on the far end of the telescope gathering the light from the object and sends it to the eyepiece. Galileo found from his measurements that the weaker its magnifying power is (as long its greater than 1) the stronger the telescope "Weaker is stronger" Where is the common sense of that? Again note the lens on the left in the above picture makes the eye look bigger Galileo found that that was not good. One needs to pick a lens for the objective that would hardly change the size of the eye when held close to the eye to the make things in the distance really big. Low power lens makes hi power telescope. The focal length of the objective on this telescope below was 60 foot the lens was very weak but made objects come in very big? Where is the common sense in that. But it works see photo below.   3rd observation of the magic of lenses: Looking through the telescope from the objective end through the eyepiece, everything looks smaller rather than bigger. That certainly not something anyone using common sense would have guessed. Could it be that Galileo's critics were and still are  looking through the wrong end of the telescope and therefore couldn't and can't see what Galileo was seeing. Could it be that the critics of science today are looking through their telescopes from the wrong end? So  in and around 1609 one of the first popularly dramatic examples of using the scientific method showed that common sense made no sense in the designing and building  the telescope nor interpreting what you saw through the telescope. Galileo decided and demonstrated that its far more productive to use this newly invented tool to design his telescope, the scientific method! The new tool he used was based on  the measurement of length mass time then with mathematics as his language he could  more reliably explain how things really work. Galileo used the scientific method to get past the magical tricks that lenses seemed to play on observer's eyes  and mind described above thus finding the better way to make a telescope. So here we have the  1609 environment that Galileo worked in. The leaders and their followers  had little to no experience in how things in nature worked they assumed it was just common sense, accept when employing natures secrets  to  inventions of war and political control. Sounds like what still goes on to day. But first and more important thing  to learn is how basic research scientist work, how they  get the research funds  to do their work and support themselves and family. Let us look at why Galileo his telescopes and the American military decided to spend  time and money designing and building  the Hubble and other orbiting telescopes. Was it to explore the heavens and make new discoveries?      The other side of the coin!  Aren't The Galileo & The Hubble  telescopes,  Weapons  for and against  Mass Destruction?   What was the motive driving Galileo to work for the local mayor/warlord and today's scientist working  directly or indirectly for  the Military designing  high powered telescopes? The monies were and are certainly not allocated to make new discoveries in the heavens just for the fun of doing it.  Galileo and today's scientist   struggle  to make  money to support their research. Galileo and many of today's scientist  make money  designing and making  measuring instrument for sale to further the needs for weapons of war. Just like many scientist do today directly and indirectly building up data about instrument of war heading their way. In Galileo's day it was for tracking Pirate ships   incoming ships and today the military for tracking incoming ballistic missiles . A high powered telescope  fit nicely into this category. In the problems of  developing  high powered telescopes  Galileo faced the theory of lens design which was primitive at best so  he made a few bad lenses. But so did the Hubble team "remember". An often asked  question that amateur  historian ask  is whether Galileo  designed his telescope   at all or  at best  by trial and error methods. Historians today ask question such as whether he did it in one day as some  claimed  he did?   How did  he do it? Instead of asking why he did it just as some of us today ask why are many basic research scientists doing weapons today? Could this be the question asked by the churches of 400 years ago and those of today why they are concerned about research? How did Galileo design the optics of his telescope What were the instruments he used to understand and forecast the optical design. One of the things one learns when studying Galileo  and which we certainly  learned while replicating a number of his instrument was that  he  was an astute observer and  very good experimental physicist. His math skills may not have been in the class with Kepler's  but his experimental skills were right up there with the best. There is very little in the Galileo's writings where he discusses how he designed his optics Perhaps the reason he left it unclear how he did the design work was  once he had the magic formula  it was proprietary business information and he would  not have likely  share it with others before he made some money on it. Thus he seems to  leave us in the dark in his writings, yet he gives us a hint in the rest of the instruments he designed like his compass and Micrometer, how he would have done it. The hint was  a useful little instrument he used to track the movements of the moons of Jupiter  for several days he measured  with precision the distance of each satellite from the planet. To do this  Galileo  used a device he was supposed to have  invented known as a micrometer for the job. He was also knowledgeable in the development of  non linear scale and graphing as shown by his compass....Sector in modern terms.    The authors, experimental scientist themselves, suggest that Galileo had already  invented this device  or something close to it  before he started to design his telescopes. He used it to determine the laws of  optics for developing the  relationship of  the eyepiece and objective focal lengths to the magnification of his telescope. We have done it in our labs and demonstrated that  it would  have taken less the a few hours when  the lenses were available.    Brief description of the use of the micrometer concepts in measuring the power of a telescope-   One of a number of  examples of  how Galilee would most likely have done it  is to  set up an optical bench  and using a variation of his micrometer and the knowledge of creating non linear scales he would have measured and studied  the magnification of mockup  telescopes using a  series of lens sets that would have been available at an optician eye glass shop. He could have used  a white scale  fixed up at a  distance and a sliding mark placed on it.  The telescope would be  focused on the scale and the latter is observed with one eye through the telescope and with the other eye direct.  The two images superimpose.  The mark is then moved along the scale until the image of the part cut off by it, as seen through the telescope, is equal in length to the whole scale as seen direct.  The magnification is then obtained by dividing the length of the whole scale by the length of the part cut off. He would have investigated the variation magnification using a variety focal length   for the objectives using  a fixed eyepiece giving him the linear relationship between focal length and magnification.  Then he would have fixed the objective at a given focal and studied the affect of the magnification of the telescope  versus the eyepiece focal length which was the reciprocal. He  most likely would have  plotted the results of the combination of a reasonable number of lens to get a get a curve or set of curves that could be extrapolated to give one the direction of how to build a high powered telescope. You can do it your self by holding pairs of lenses up and looking  thru them you can see the object and the image superimposed and pretty well judge the magnification as you change the  focal  length of the lenses. An example of  the business of science versus business of engineering.  Below we debate the question of Galileo's choice  of a negative eyepiece  rather than positive one. It is important  to look at the design from a product development point  view. Here Galileo was acting as an entrepreneur  rather than as a  scientist. For one thing as a scientist he needed to make money. Scientist didn't  make much money then and they don't make much  now.  The engineer/product designer has  to take different things in to account than a scientist. He has to note  the nature of the customer his level of sophistication and  how he is going to use the product, the  cost of the product and how easy it is to use the product. All this compromises the design of the product. The telescope in this case. for those who find fault in Galileo design  one example namely using a negative eyepiece with its narrow field of view versus and  up right image versus using a  positive eyepiece with it much wider field of view and upside down image. we recommend they  review their opinion from this new perspective. Its important to know the difference and not confuse their different roles in our life which happens allot today. One thing of interest in his design was his choice of a negative lens as an eyepiece. it has a smaller  field of view instead of a positive lens . Some  biographers have suggested that Galileo never bothered to look at a positive lens as an eyepiece. We suggest otherwise. When he did his experimenting there were a lot more short focal length positive lenses around than negative ones. They would have been used as hand magnifiers,  on a desk tops, or in ones pocket. They would be a lot cheaper than a pair of eyeglasses with matched lenses. Although the positive lens for the same magnification had a wider field of view the image was upside down. As an entrepreneur as well  as a physicist he was really designing these telescope for none technical customers  who were going to use them  for terrestrial use only. They also had to be simple to build.  Erecting eyepieces require a minimum of  two lenses  and were  much more complex to design and build .There was  also a practical need for short telescopes which the  negative lens did for them.  Galileo had to go out of his way the use the negative lens only and we have to believe that he chose the lens type that gave an upright image and sacrificed the better field of view.  Galileo ground and polished the necessary lenses tested his results and had his high powered telescope in comparatively short period of time. Galileo was acting as a scientist when he turned it up to the sky and stumbled onto  discoveries of a life time for at least a few weeks he was  gathering data as fast as he could and he would have been in a wild race  to gather this data  before some one else did (he new that he wasn't going to be the only the only scientist looking up there). Probably he wasn't thinking much about a new telescope design. He was also interested in getting a new job.   Which method do you prefer  measurements or common sense? Things that contributed to the delay, besides the overuse of common sense. Additional answers to the question why did it take so long to invent the higher powered telescope. for hundreds of years opticians were making eyeglasses. Surely some them held up the right combination to give optical power "the telescope/ microscope"  Here are at least three more reasons.   1 ST, there literally were no lenses made with long focal lengths, one meter or longer "a requirement for making a high powered telescope," This shortage was simply because there was so little magnification that they were not needed as eyeglasses, the principle market for lenses. 2 nd. there was not much of a call for a device that would bring thing far away closer. Galileo became interested because of the military need. He was already working on a calculating device for gunnery calculations. Galileo appreciated the need of the mayor of Venice to detect pirate ships coming to attack before they got there, or the businessmen getting early information on the arrival of an inbound cargo ship. This was one of the finer point Marconi used in selling his radio  It was only the beginning of the rapid growth of the scientific method, a method that made it possible to get realistic answers to questions about how sophisticated things work. A method that has raised the quality of life where ever it is used.  3rd   and perhaps the most important observation  of the magic of lenses: Looking through the telescope from the objective end through the eyepiece, everything looks smaller rather than bigger. That certainly not something anyone using common sense would have guessed. Could it be that Galileo's critics were and still are  looking through the wrong end of the telescope and therefore couldn't and can't see what Galileo was seeing. Could it be that the critics of science today are looking through their telescopes from the wrong end? Of courses some critics would remind us that if one replaces the negative eyepiece lens with a powerful positive eyepiece it turns out that Galileo's telescope is turned into a microscope. Galileo did that also. Galileo's Microscope. Today, unfortunately, its taken to much for granted.

This contemporary line of common sense reasoning versus using the scientific method was. and still is, so strongly imbedded in some people on an international scale that it could be labeled as a syndrome.  The  authors are moved to call it the "Galilean Syndrome". Fortunately there is a cure on the horizon, namely, Education: education of our leaders, its citizens, and most importantly, ourselves. "Special side note- Some leaders felt so strongly about the value of common sense in Galileo's day that they thoughtfully decided that people of note, who disagreed with the results of common sense were misleading the rest of the world and they should be disposed of by Burning them alive at the stake. This  would solve two problems at the same time; one, eliminate the messenger, two, send a strong warning to any predisposed follower of the same path.