ABSTRACT
The earliest mechanical universe was found deep in the Aegean Sea amongst the treasures of a Roman shipwreck. Sponge divers found a 2,000 year old mechanism able to predict the path of the Sun and Moon through the stars. Copernicus' great champion, Rheticus, was so outraged by this addition that he threatened to "rough up the fellow so violently that in future he would mind his own business". The Dutch telescopes could magnify an object three times larger than real life. One year after its invention, Galileo made his own telescope which could magnify 20 times. Newton's telescope was good enough to reproduce Galileo's observations, but not much more. It took another 50 years before astronomers were able to grind mirrors large enough to rival refracting telescopes. Optical telescopes may have been an accidental discovery in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
