Refracting telescope
Refractors were the earliest type of optical telescope. The first practical refracting telescopes appeared in the Netherlands about 1608, and were credited to three individuals, Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, spectacle-makers in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar. Galileo Galilei, happening to be in Venice in about the month of May 1609, heard of the invention and constructed a version of his own. Galileo then communicated the details of his invention to the public, and presented the instrument itself to the Doge Leonardo Donato, sitting in full council.
Charles Husband
Husband worked with Bernard Lovell – the founder of the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Holmes Chapel in Cheshire – on the design and construction of the observatory's first large steerable radio telescope, the "250-ft telescope" (now known as the Lovell Telescope). After attempting to adapt military radar equipment to detect cosmic rays shortly after the Second World War, Lovell had realised that a much larger aerial would be required, and constructed a 66-metre diameter dish, limited by being static, before proposing the development of an even larger steerable telescope. The idea posed such formidable engineering challenges that the project had been declared "impossible" by other engineers, but Husband is reported to have concluded at their first meeting in September 1949, "It should be easy—about the same problem as throwing a swing bridge over the Thames at Westminster."