Unforeseen Implications of Earlier Telescopes?

[X Equestris]

I waffled a little on whether to ask this here or stick in Writing Discussions under the Setting tag, but ultimately this feels more like a research question.

While rewriting an old story, I came across a point where the main character uses a spyglass to survey a small village and the terrain around it because it's shaping up to be a battlefield, and it occurred to me that telescopes are more advanced than most of the other tech in this world. Overall, its tech level roughly corresponds to Early 14th Century Europe and MENA. The first telescopes seem to be from the early 17th.

Now, I don't have a problem leaving the spyglass in the story, and I don't mind some stuff being created earlier or later than it was in our world. But I do want to avoid their presence being as silly as hay bales without a mechanical hay baler, overlooking other tech their existence might enable that would be obvious to someone who knows a lot about optics, or not accounting for their ramifications on society.

So I guess these are my questions:

• Is there anything (probably related to lens crafting?) required to make simple refracting telescopes that wouldn't exist with a 14th Century level of technology?
• Would the existence of basic refractors enable the existence of other things that might not seem obvious at a glance? Stuff like microscopes? Magnifying glasses?
• Are there any possible uses for telescopes or implications of their existence that might be easily overlooked? Obviously, there'd be an impact on warfare, hunting, navigation, exploration, and it massively opens up astronomy.

Now, this isn't a huge facet of the story or world or anything. And if it matters, telescopes are still very new, rare, and expensive. But this story is also set a lot earlier than most of the others in the same series, and a lot can change in a decade or two, so I want to be sure all my ducks are in a row. Google and other search engines haven't been helpful, so thanks in advance for any ideas or advice you might have!

 

[DLC]

That's a good question. I'd think it would have something to do with the quality of glass that was available at the time. Ye olde windows were opaque and not always clear, but when this changed idk. Maybe look up evolution of lenses (you'll get a lot of eyeball stuff but maybe...)

 

[DLC]

hold up what was the name of the old greek dude that talked about refraction / colours? musta had one.

 

[X Equestris]

hold up what was the name of the old greek dude that talked about refraction / colours? musta had one.

Ptolemy? Euclid?

I believe most of these early thinkers were working from geometric principles and natural lenses, though there do seem to’ve been some crude glass or jewel ones in use in ancient times. Spectacles came around in the late 1200s, so there must’ve been high-quality lensmaking by then, but everything I’ve found so far has this big gap between eyeglasses and the invention of the telescope.

Makes me wonder if it’s as simple as nobody thinking of it in that time, which would work well for my purposes.

 

[CdnWriter]

TBH, you might get more responses from Reddit in r/writingresearch and r/science, maybe also r/technology

It's also possible you'll get a VERY informative answer at r/AskHistory or r/AskHistorians

You just need to 2x check, maybe 3x check the responses you get in case someone trolls you and makes you believe that telescopes were created via black magic with bat blood and eyes of newts....

 

[X Equestris]

Good suggestion. I already tried r/worldbuilding but didn’t get any answers.