Scientists did not believe Galileo, but Galileo showed a marked tendency to use all his discoveries as evidence for Copernicanism. He seems to have made a lot of enemies by making his opponents look like fools. Moreover, not all of them actually were fools. Because of Galileo, people were able to see that the world revolved around the sun and not vice versa. The four satellites of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, were found by Galileo, and studied in order to develop a method for determining longitudes at sea. Galileo's microscope was just the beginning of modern science. From his crude model, we now have microscopes able to see something over 1000 times closer than 300 years ago. From Galileo also came the thermoscope, able to measure the heat of water. From that came the Florentine thermometer. Galileo also worked with magnets, trying to increase the magnitude of rocks. While he was working with mechanics, he studied the natural descent of bodies along planes of various inclinations, the formulation of the law which established the relationship between space traversed and time interval in free-fall, the isochronism of the oscillations of pendulums of equal lengths and, of particular importance, the motion of projectiles. All these helped the Florentine Museum of Physics and Natural History construct experimental devices such as the model of the inclined plane, the brachistochrone descent and the machine for raising water. ...
