Alex White

Refracting Telescopes
The first practical refracting telescopes appeared in the early 1600 when Dutch spectacle-makers Hans Lippershey & Zacharias Janssen were messing about with lenses and noticed that they increased the size of distant objects. This led to them developing the first refracting telescopes. A refracting telescope works by a lenses (the objective lenses) focusing parallel light to a focal point, and diagonal light to a focal plane, this is then focused again by a second lenses close to the eye (the eyepiece lenses)

Reflecting telescopes
The reflecting telescope was invented 17th century as a replacement for the refracting telescope, the ideas for reflecting telescopes were first put forward by Galileo however no working models were invented until 1668 by Isaac Newton. A reflecting telescope works by using one or more curved or flat mirrors There are many designs of reflecting telescope like.

Alex White Many other designs work on a similar principle with the eye piece being to the side, reflecting telescopes also work with a curved mirror called a parabola, which focuses all the light to a single point, however this design is more common in radio telescopes