Sidereus Nuncius
The first telescopes appeared in the Netherlands in 1608 when Middelburg spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey tried to obtain a patent on one. By 1609 Galileo had heard about it and built his own improved version. He probably was not the first person to aim the new invention at the night sky but his was the first systematic (and published) study of celestial bodies using one. One of Galileo's first telescopes had 8x to 10x linear magnification and was made out of lenses that he had ground himself. This was increased to 20x linear magnification in the improved telescope he used to make the observations in "Sidereus Nuncius".
History of the telescope
The era of radio telescopes (along with radio astronomy) was born with Karl Guthe Jansky's serendipitous discovery of an astronomical radio source in 1931. Many types of telescopes were developed in the 20th century for a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays. The development of space observatories after 1960 allowed access
to several bands impossible to observe from the ground, including X-rays and longer wavelength infrared bands.