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.
Alethoscope
An alethoscope (Greek true+view) is an instrument for viewing pictures with a lens to enlarge and show them with natural relations and proportions. The alethoscope was invented by Carlo Ponti in 1860 and patented in 1861. It was used to view photographs that were colored, perforated and mounted on a curved frame. The alethoscope showed day-and-night effects whether viewing it against the light or reflect the light by two side mirrors. It is the larger version of a megalethoscope.