A previously unknown 17th-century manuscript has provided new insights into the history of telescope development. Dr. José María Moreno Madrid, a researcher at UL’s School of History and Geography, discovered a 1666 document written by a Spanish Dominican friar named Ignacio Muñoz. In De Tellescopiis Stellarum, Muñoz provided a detailed, component-by-component description of a four-lens telescope, which he attributed to Galileo («fabricatum a Galilaeo»). This research, published in Annals of Science, suggests that experimentation with four-lens telescopes took place earlier than previously documented and may indeed have been conducted by Galileo himself. If confirmed, this would move the earliest known experimentation with such designs back to at least 1630. Additionally, Muñoz’s manuscript would become the most detailed technical analysis of a telescope demonstrably made by Galileo.
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