History of the telescope received the report in November, and the English mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot, who used a six-powered telescope by the summer of 1609 to observe features on the moon. The Italian polymath Galileo Galilei was in Venice in June 1609 and there heard of the "Dutch perspective glass" by means of which distant objects appeared nearer and larger. Galileo states that he solved the problem of the construction of a telescope the first night after his return to Padua from Venice and made his first telescope the next day by fitting a convex lens in one extremity of a leaden
The Man Who Sold the Moon liquidates his assets, risks bankruptcy, damages his marriage, and raises funds in numerous legitimate and semi-legitimate ways; "I", he says, "would cheat, lie, steal, beg, bribedo "anything" to accomplish what we have accomplished". Children donate money for a promise of all contributors' names engraved on a plaque left on the Moon. The names, however, will be microscopic in size. Harriman sells land and naming rights to craters, and plans to sell postal covers canceled on the Moon to collectors. He starts rumors that diamonds exist in moondust, intending to secretly place gems in the rocket to convince people that the