Hans Lipperhey's telescope
On April 9, 1609 The Twelve Year's Truce was signed between Spain and the young Dutch nation. This truce was a result of the game-changing power of the telescope as an instrument of war. Hans Lipperhey (who made the first telescope) had presented his invention six months earlier to a meeting of Spanish, Dutch, and French diplomats and military leaders—they chose to make peace rather than fight the new and unknown war tactics that the telescope enabled.
Source: Tyson, Neil deGrasse, and Avis Lang. 2018. Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Public Domain
License CC BY 4.0
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!