Question: What is the maximum physical size limit for refracting telescopes?
About the article "Telescope", section "History".

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The earliest recorded working telescopes were the refracting telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608.
Their development is credited to three individuals: Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, who were spectacle makers in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar.
Galileo heard about the Dutch telescope in June 1609, built his own within a month, and greatly improved upon the design in the following year.
The idea that the objective, or light-gathering element, could be a mirror instead of a lens was being investigated soon after the invention of the refracting telescope.
The potential advantages of using parabolic mirrors—reduction of spherical aberration and no chromatic aberration—led to many proposed designs and several attempts to build reflecting telescopes.
In 1668, Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope, of a design which now bears his name, the Newtonian reflector.
The invention of the achromatic lens in 1733 partially corrected color aberrations present in the simple lens and enabled the construction of shorter, more functional refracting telescopes.
Reflecting telescopes, though not limited by the color problems seen in refractors, were hampered by the use of fast tarnishing speculum metal mirrors employed during the 18th and early 19th century—a problem alleviated by the introduction of silver coated glass mirrors in 1857, and aluminized mirrors in 1932.
The maximum physical size limit for refracting telescopes is about 1 meter (40 inches), dictating that the vast majority of large optical researching telescopes built since the turn of the 20th century have been reflectors.
The largest reflecting telescopes currently have objectives larger than 10 m (33 feet).
The 20th century also saw the development of telescopes that worked in a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays.
The first purpose built radio telescope went into operation in 1937.
Since then, a tremendous variety of complex astronomical instruments have been developed.
Yerkes Observatory's refracting telescope was built by the master optician Alvan Clark.
It is the largest refracting telescope used for scientific research.
(A larger demonstration refractor, the Great Paris Exhibition Telescope of 1900, was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900.)
The telescope was exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago before being installed in the observatory.
The observatory also houses and reflecting telescopes.
Several smaller telescopes are used for educational purposes. 
A refracting or refractor telescope is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptric telescope).
The refracting telescope design was originally used in spy glasses and astronomical telescopes but is also used for long focus camera lenses.
Although large refracting telescopes were very popular in the second half of the 19th century, for most research purposes the refracting telescope has been superseded by the reflecting telescope which allows larger apertures.
A refractor's magnification is calculated by dividing the focal length of the optical tube by the focal length of the eyepiece. 
The observatory contained a 11-inch Clark-Repsold refracting telescope.  
Beam expanders are optical devices that take a collimated beam of light and expand its size (or, used in reverse, reduce its size).
In laser physics they are used either as intracavity or extracavity elements.
They can be telescopic in nature or prismatic.
Generally prismatic beam expanders use several prisms and are known as multiple-prism beam expanders.
Telescopic beam expanders include refracting and reflective telescopes.
A refracting telescope commonly used is the Galilean telescope which can function as a simple beam expander for collimated light.
When used as intracavity beam expanders, in laser resonators, these telescopes provide two-dimensional beam expansion in the 20–50 range.
In tunable laser resonators intracavity beam expansion usually illuminates the whole width of a diffraction grating.
Thus beam expansion reduces the beam divergence and enables the emission of very narrow linewidths which is a desired feature for many analytical applications including laser spectroscopy.