The Whipple Museum has a graphic telescope made by its inventor, Cornelius Varley, around 1840. The optical principles involved are related to those used in other artistic aids such as the camera obscura and the camera lucida.
An advertisement for the instrument begins with the following claim:
By this instrument, any person, who can make a good outline, may draw, correctly, all kinds of objects, the most distant, as well as near, magnified to any scale.
And continues:
Buildings, Carts, Wagons, Agricultural Implements, &c. Boats and Shipping when ashore, with all the minutiae or rigging and curves of the vessel, may be traced in true proportion and perspective, let them be ever so complicated; more particularly, views of Towns, things which few persons would have the patience to attempt, without such an instrument. (1)
