400 years ago the first telescopes were used to study the skies, Galileo's largest telescope was believed to have an aperture of 33mm. From there the largest telescopes in the world steadily grew until modern large telescopes have mirrors over 10meters in diameter. We can follow the evolution of the astronomical telescope by looking at the largest telescopes in the world over the centuries.
I'm only covering optical telescopes, there are understandably larger aperture radio telescopes, but that's a whole separate story.
This wikipedia page included all the the telescopes I mention listed by date, but I skip many of the early ones as the telescopes weren't major installations until Herschel's 40 foot telescope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_telescopes_historically
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