History of the telescope a wider field of view than a classic Cassegrain. During the period 1850–1900, reflectors suffered from problems with speculum metal mirrors, and a considerable number of "Great Refractors" were built from 60 cm to 1 metre aperture, culminating in the Yerkes Observatory refractor in 1897; however, starting from the early 1900s a series of ever-larger reflectors with glass mirrors were built, including the Mount Wilson 60-inch (1.5 metre), the 100-inch (2.5 metre) Hooker Telescope (1917) and the 200-inch (5 metre) Hale telescope (1948); essentially all major research telescopes since 1900 have been reflectors. A number of 4-metre class (160 inch)
Telescope the task they perform such as [[astrograph]]s, [[comet seeker]]s and [[solar telescope]]s. [[File:USA.NM.VeryLargeArray.02.jpg|thumb|200px|The [[Very Large Array]] at Socorro, New Mexico, United States.]] Radio telescopes are [[Directional antenna|directional]] [[radio antennas]] used for [[radio astronomy]]. The dishes are sometimes constructed of a conductive wire mesh whose openings are smaller than the [[wavelength]] being observed. Multi-element [[Radio telescope]]s are constructed from pairs or larger groups of these dishes to synthesize large 'virtual' apertures that are similar in size to the separation between the telescopes; this process is known as [[aperture synthesis]]. As of 2005, the current record array size is many times the