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One of the challenges that innovators face in convincing people of their innovations is that their beginnings appear weak and, as a result, discouraging. Innovation comes weak at first, which weakens enthusiasm for it, and obscures the perception of what is possible in the future. Who could have imagined that the Wright brothers’ plane, which flew just 12 seconds, could eventually lead to an entire aviation industry of the size we know today. Once innovation opens a small window of what is possible, slow development begins until it gradually accelerates, unleashing its latent power.
In the seventeenth century AD, Galileo was interested in studying astronomy and the movement of celestial bodies, according to his specialization in mathematics, with which astronomy was closely linked at the time. Galileo learned of a new innovation in lenses from which he made a telescope at the hands of a Dutch innovator, so he wanted to use it for his astronomical studies. Galileo was excited about the idea, but the telescope was not powerful enough. The first innovation was simple and perhaps naive, and there was no strong motivation behind it for development because its applications were not yet understood.
Galileo decided to develop the telescope himself, despite the difficult task. In a short period of time, he was able to improve the power of the telescope eight times, and then to thirty times after that. Galileo now had in his hand a tool with which he could explore space as never before. By today’s standards, the telescope made by Galileo was so primitive that you can find the same today in any children’s toy store, but he was able to see the moon with it for the first time up close.
Galileo directed the telescope to the moon, and the surprise was that it was not a smooth surface as seen by the naked eye, but rather a complex terrain. The prevailing perception at the time was that the earth was the center of the universe, and the moon, the sun, and the rest of the planets revolved around it. Several months later, on the seventh of January, the planet Jupiter appeared in the direction of the Pleiades group, and he saw three stars surrounding Jupiter, one on one side and two on the other side. The next night he saw all three stars on one side. On the thirteenth day of January, Galileo found a fourth star, when he realized that the fourth star had been hidden behind Jupiter the whole time.
The stars Galileo spotted were the four moons of Jupiter. The planets seemed so small to the telescope that their size did not differ much from the size of the stars, but he realized that they revolve around Jupiter, which led to the important conclusion that the Earth is not the axis of the universe as was the prevailing belief at the time, as long as these planets revolve around Jupiter and not around the Earth, there is Other planets revolve, some in orbits outside Earth’s orbit. With his primitive telescope, Galileo was able to turn the theory of the earth the axis of the universe upside down, which was the theory that prevailed in Europe two thousand years ago, pushing the continent and the world after that into a new era.