A selection of early draw tube refracting telescopes, early 18th century.

Pietro Patron in Milan, Italy made the smallest telescope with its ivory mounted lenses and decorated green vellum tube. The larger telescope with green parchment tube on a wooden stand is unsigned but also Italian in origin. The largest telescope made from wood and leather is by an unknown English maker, and when fully extended measures 16 1/2 feet. Unlike Galileo's (1564-1642) telescopes, they are fitted with convex eyepiece lenses, as first suggested by the astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) in 1611. This gives them a much wider field of view than Galileo's telescopes, while the inverted image can be made upright by adding an extra convex lens.