A Special Colloquium on the History of Astronomy was held on 12 September (Friday afternoon session) and on 13 September (Saturday morning session) 2008 at the Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting (JENAM) in Vienna. The colloquium gave the opportunity to document some developments of the telescope and telescopic astronomy in Europe during the last centuries. Participants also enjoyed a tour of the museum of Vienna Observatory with its collection of historical instruments and old books. It was organized by Th. Posch and J. Hamel, who are presently engaged in the identification and classification of these instruments, and in the production of an inventory 1 . A visit to the privately founded Kuffner Observatory in Wien-Ottakring, with its well preserved instrumentation followed in the afternoon.
Sixteen talks were presented to an audience of over two dozen participants; twelve papers, refereed by the Editors, are included in this issue (one talk resulted in the production of two papers). Some manuscripts could not be included here, because they were not submitted in time, had inadequate illustrations, or they were written in German, and too much of the essence would have been lost by a translation.