Historical records for Italy in 1609, rendered directly from the World History Database and ordered by month, day and event.
The Venetian senate examines Galileo's telescope. Demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers, his work on the device made for a profitable sideline with merchants who found it useful for their shipping businesses and trading issues
Galileo along with Englishman Thomas Harriot and others are among the first to use a refracting telescope as an instrument to observe stars, planets or moons. Builds his own telescope, has 20x magnification
After learning of the Dutch telescope, Galileo rapidly improves the design until his best instruments exceed twenty-power magnification.
This page is generated from stored World History Database records matching the exact country and year shown above. Exact duplicate display records are collapsed. Records without a month are listed after the monthly sections. Source provenance varies by record; formal academic citation should be checked against the relevant primary source, archive or specialist historical reference.