Salviati… in our time it has pleased God to concede to human ingenuity an invention so wonderful as to have the power of increasing vision four, six, ten, twenty, thirty, and forty times, and an infinite number of objects which were invisible, either because of distance or extreme minuteness, have become visible by means of the telescope. Simplicio Everything that Salviati is presently setting forth is truly new to me. Frankly, I had no interest in reading those books, nor up till now have I put any faith in the newly introduced optical device. Instead, following in the footsteps of other Peripatetic philosophers of my group, I have considered as fallacies and deceptions of the lenses those things which other people have admired as stupendous achievements. (Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems—Ptolemaic & Copernican, 335–6)