Whence
Telescope
Invention

Where does Telescope come from?

The telescope comes from the Netherlands. Its earliest record is a patent application filed in October 1608 by Hans Lipperhey, a spectacle maker in Middelburg, for an instrument 'for seeing things far away as if they were nearby'.

A spyglass from Middelburg

Lipperhey was born in Wesel, now in Germany, around 1570 and settled in Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, in 1594, where he became a master lens grinder. On 2 October 1608 he asked the States General, the Dutch government, for a patent. His device was a convex and a concave lens in a tube, magnifying about three times. Weeks later Jacob Metius of Alkmaar applied too. The States General found the device too easy to copy to grant a patent, but paid Lipperhey handsomely to make binocular versions.

News travels fast

Word spread quickly, helped by a widely distributed report on an embassy from the King of Siam to The Hague, which mentioned the new instrument at its end. By April 1609 three-powered spyglasses were on sale in French spectacle shops, and in early August the Englishman Thomas Harriot observed the Moon with a six-powered one. Who first had the idea is still unclear: another Middelburg man, Sacharias Janssen, seems to have had a telescope at about the same time, and the craftsmen of the day left few records.

Why people think of Italy (Galileo)

Galileo made the telescope famous, but he did not invent it. He heard of the Dutch spyglass in 1609, built a three-powered one in June or July, and by October or November was turning a twenty-powered instrument to the sky. He saw mountains and valleys on the Moon, discovered four moons of Jupiter and published his findings in March 1610. Even the name came from his circle: 'telescope', Greek for 'far-seeing', was proposed in 1611 at a banquet held to welcome Galileo into the Accademia dei Lincei.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › History of the telescope ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Hans Lipperhey ↗ · web.archive.org ↗

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