The Invention of the Telescope

The Ancient Greek writer Hecataeus claimed the Ancient British had a devise that could bring the moon so near them as to show the mountains and rocks, and other appearances upon its surface. The only way they could have seen these details is if they did have a type telescope and this is backed up in the Ancient Welsh histories. According to EO Gordon in ‘Prehistoric London’, first published in 1914,

The Druids, it is said, by means of a most powerful reflecting mirror of metal called “Dyrch Haul Kibddar,” filled the circle (Stonehenge) with a blaze of glory from on high. This is mentioned in the Triads as the speculum of the all-pervading glance, or the searcher of mystery ; one of “the Three Secrets of the Isle of Britain.”

This would suggest that they had a parabolic reflector; this is the entry for speculum in Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911

SPECULUM, the Latin word for a mirror, employed more particularly for a metallic mirror used in a reflecting telescope. In early instruments metallic mirrors, made from an alloy of copper and tin, with the addition of a little arsenic or other metals to increase the whiteness, were customarily employed, but they have now been displaced by the more convenient silver on-glass mirror. Various forms of specula are used in surgery for examining internal organs.

The Ancient British certainly had enough tin to make this alloy as they had a virtual monopoly in the Ancient World's tin supplies.

The mirror at Stonehenge was used for the mid-summer sunrise and it illuminated the central altar at the moment of sunrise, given how often the sun fails to shine in Britain it seems likely that they didn’t rely on reflecting the sun but probably used some kind of flare or firework – the Druids were thought to have used gunpowder, particularly in their sacred groves.

It is worth noting that Herschel when discovering his planets used exactly the same method to make the primary mirrors for his telescopes - out of polished speculum metal. Some of his telescopes had glass lenses but to look at fainter images he would not use the lenses as they reflected too much light. Instead, he turned his back to the part of the sky he wanted to study and by looking into the curved mirror, directly magnified that part of the sky. The body of the telescope and the eye piece are effectively only tubes and the Ancient British would have had no problem making these either out of wood or metal so this type of telescope would also have been potentially available to the Ancient Britons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflecting_telescope#Herschelian_telescope

the method for casting and grinding the mirror would also have been possible and so would have been the focusing, this is a modern version

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_telescope_making#Mirror_making

Obviously, the ancients would not have had a light bulb but then neither did Herschel and he got by. People think that the Ancient British did not have razors, they did and men were for the most part clean-shaven, the few toffs who had droopy moustaches would certainly have shaved their beards. And they had sharp swords.

Given that the Ancient British had a reflecting mirror it would have been a bit strange if they had not used it to look at the stars, some claim it was the Druids who worked out the Zodiac system but if so that would have been far earlier than this telescope. Hecataeus lived from c. 550BC to c. 476BC which is actually not that far back in time, he must have either seen the telescope or heard reports of it so it must have been in his lifetime or a little before.

According to the British Chronicles Britain at this time had been going through some political uncertainties, there were four competing kings which led to civil war but it was also a period when Britain was becoming recognisably modern. Within a generation the 'Four Roads of Britain' were built; the Fosse, Watling, Ermine, and the Ikenild, Roman type roads long before the Romans even had them and shows a level of sophistication that the conventional historians fail to tell us about.

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