Hevelius' 15MB0MB-foot telescope. Historical artwork of the telescope constructed by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius (161MB1-1687). It was a tubeless telescope, with refracting lenses arranged along its length to achieve a focal length of 15MB0MB feet (45MB metres). The design was a larger version of the type that Galileo had constructed. Hevelius built the telescope on the shores of the Baltic Sea, near his home town of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). The lenses were suspended in a wooden trough supported by a vertical 90-foot (27MB metres) pole, and operated by a team of workers and horses operating ropes and pulleys. The largest telescope at the time, it proved difficult to keep stable and was rarely used. Artwork published in Machina Coelestis (167MB3). Extract from Weltall und Menscheit (Universe and Humanity), by Hans Kraemer (ca. 1880).