Bernardz wrote:

I am writing a what-if history fiction and need some help.

If you were suddenly dropped in Rome say in 200 CE and you needed to
build a telescope for mass production. What sort of telescope would you
make and what would it look like?

You would essentially be limited to what Galileo used centuries later, a
very basic refractor telescope using one convex objective lens, perhaps
an inch (25mm) in diameter and a smaller concave eyepiece lens located
at the focal length of the objective. The lenses would be assembled in a
metal or paper tube. The hard part would be making optical quality glass
in 200-CE. It took about 5000-years from the accidental discovery of
glass by the Phoenicians, (in the sand under their cooking fires) to the
first lenses in the 16th century. You would need a small blast furnace
to make the glass from sand. Each lens would be shaped by grinding two
glass disks together with some natural abrasive (sand?) and water
between them. The abrasive would have to be graded to various sizes by
letting it settle through a water column. You would start the grinding
with the coarse grade and proceed to the finest, just like it's done
today. Finally the lens would be polished, probably using bees wax to
make a 'lap' with some kind of very fine abrasive or 'rouge' as the
polishing agent, which might be hard to find in that era.
In all, it would be a very challenging project and I doubt it would be
practical to mass produce them. However, even if you made just one
telescope in Roman times it could change the course of history.


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