Ever since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, astronomers have not had to peer through the haze of the Earth's atmosphere to glimpse the heavens. That, of course, is because Hubble's 8-feet-plus-diameter mirror lives in space, orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 340 miles once every 95 minutes. In 2021, the James Webb Space telescope became the successor to Hubble, boasting a mirror that is more than 21 feet across and orbiting not the Earth but the sun. In this way, telescopes are improving by orders of magnitude, although, astronomically speaking, they are barely inching closer to their subjects. Such accomplishments would probably have seemed impossible even to the great Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who is well known today for his 1610 discovery, via telescope, of the four largest of Jupiter's 80-some moons. In fact, in the early 17th century, Galileo was playing catch up, having been bested by an Englishman named Thomas Harriott for the claim of being the first astronomer to gaze at our own much closer moon through a polished-glass lens. Harriott's telescopic observations of the moon were made on July 26, 1609, several months before Galileo pointed a telescope at the same heavenly body on November 30 of the same year. In the end, though, Galileo's drawings of the moon were much better than Harriott's, which is why most schoolchildren—and sometimes even NASA—associate Galileo's name with our first detailed look at the moon rather than Harriott's. Neither astronomer invented the device which allowed them to peer into the blackness of space. That accomplishment is credited to Hans Lippershey, a Netherlands eyeglasses maker who first looked through a telescope of his own design in 1608. But Lippershey's star has waned over the course of history, with names like Johannes Kepler, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton, Leon Foucault, and George Ellery Hale. It was Hale who hired Edwin Hubble to make his name looking through Hale's Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory. For those of us who will never have the opportunity to look through the Hooker, Hubble, or Webb, we can console ourselves with an antique or vintage telescope made for use by mariners, members of the military, or just amateur stargazers. During the Victorian Era, the names Cooke, Clark, Dollond, Watson, and Negretti & Zambra were associated with high-quality portable telescopes, while Dollond also earned a fine reputation for its maritime spyglasses. By World War II, spyglasses were still used widely by navies, who purchased their pieces from companies such as Wollensak, Newbold & Bulford (sold as ENBEECO), and Broadhurst Clarkson. After the war, amateurs could buy portable telescopes from the likes of Bausch & Lomb, whose BALscope Sr. was a favorite of bird watchers. Tinsley Laboratories made 3- and 4-inch refracting telescopes that were mounted on handsome wooden tripods. J. W. Fecker advertised its telescopes as being "Precision Built for the Exacting Amateur”; Cave Optical sold its telescopes under the Astrola brand, while Coast Instruments countered with its Treckerscope. Other popular vintage telescope manufacturers of the mid-20th century include Criterion, Edmund Scientific, and Unitron.