I’d like one of these, a “Telephonoscope.” As described in Camille Flammarion’s 1894 novel “La Fin du Monde” (The End of the World).
Flammarion is known as one of the fathers of science fiction, an “astronomer, mystic and storyteller” who was “obsessed by life after death, and on other worlds, and seemed to see no distinction between the two.” (Wikipedia)
A crater on the Moon and one on Mars are named after him.
Flammarion wrote:
“What intelligent being, what being capable of responding emotionally to a beautiful sight, can look at the jagged, silvery lunar crescent trembling in the azure sky, even through the weakest of telescopes, and not be struck by it in an intensely pleasurable way, not feel cut off from everyday life here on earth and transported toward that first stop on the celestial journeys?”