History of the telescope
The earliest known telescope appeared in 1608 in the Netherlands when an eyeglass maker named Hans Lippershey tried to obtain a patent on one. Although Lippershey did not receive his patent, news of the new invention soon spread across Europe. The design of these early refracting telescopes consisted of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. Galileo improved on this design the following year and applied it to astronomy. In 1611, Johannes Kepler described how a far more useful telescope could be made with a convex objective lens and a convex eyepiece lens and by 1655 astronomers such as Christiaan Huygens were building powerful but unwieldy Keplerian telescopes with compound eyepieces.
Clock drive
Different types of equatorial clock-driven telescopes were built or proposed in the 17th and 18th century including English astronomer Robert Hooke's 1674 paper proposing their use in precision measurement, a clock-driven aerial telescope objective lens constructed in 1685 by Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini fitted with setting circles, and one supposedly built by English clockmaker and inventor George Graham early 18th century.
What is considered the first practical clock-driven telescope was constructed in 1824, Joseph von Fraunhofer's ‘Great Dorpat’ refractor, a telescope that combined other innovations, such as an achromatic lens and Fraunhofer's "German equatorial mount", making it the prototype of all future large refracting telescopes. Early telescope clock drives used a clock work with falling weights and pendulums, almost like grandfather clocks. Over time the falling weights and pendulums were replaced by an electric motor.