First use of telescope

For years, Galileo has been credited as being the first man to observe the moon through a telescope and to make detailed drawings of the moon. Now it seems that Thomas Harriot, a wealthy Englishman, had made very detailed drawings of the moon's surface well before Galileo.

The discussion in the article ponders why Galileo is so famous and not Thomas Harriot. Unfortunately, this is often true in Science. Darwin, though he did write the most comprehensive work on the origin of species, was not the first to come up with the ideas. There are several preceding claims. Similarly, Marconi probably wasn't the first to invent the telegraph. Newton and Leibnitz both arrived at entirely different formulations for calculus (and a lot of what we use today is based on Leibnitz and not Newton). One could go on and on.

It is curious, but it does seem that often scientific breakthroughs have been arrived at somewhat independently by multiple people at the same time. The person usually credited is usually not the person who was first, but the person who did the most to popularize the breakthrough. In that sense, it is right that Galileo is the one credited.