Hans Lippershey and the very first telescope

The invention of the telescope is often attributed to the Dutch lens sharpener Hans Lippershey. In 1608, he applied patent for an instrument ‘to see afar off’.

According to a legend, Lippershey was given the idea of ​​developing a telescope by two of his children. One day, when these were playing in their father’s eyewear shop, they would have discovered that they could see the local church tower much magnified if they looked through a concave lens close to their eye through a convex lens a little further. However, this story dates from the eighteenth century and is therefore apocryphal.

It is doubtful whether Lippershey was actually the first to make a telescope. The name of Lippershey’s neighbor is often also mentioned: Zacharias Jansen. He also developed a viewer around the same time. And Jacob Metius is also sometimes mentioned as the inventor of the telescope. The fact is that this Alkmaar optician also developed binoculars, but a few weeks after Lippershey he asked the States Generalpatented his invention, which resulted in his application being rejected. It is also sometimes claimed that the English astronomer Thomas Digges developed a telescope before. Around 1570, he wrote that things at great distances could be seen magnified when “proportional glasses” were placed at certain angles from each other. Finally, the name of the Italian architect Giambattista della Porta, who died in 1615, is sometimes mentioned when it comes to the invention of the telescope.

Spread of the telescope

There may be some debate as to whether Lippershey was the first inventor of the telescope, but he is the one who popularized the device. In 1608, de Zeeuw traveled to The Hague for his patent application, where he gave a demonstration on the roof of the prince’s residence in the presence of Prince Maurits and various members of the States General. Thanks to the telescope, the church tower of Delft was clearly visible that day from the Stadhouderstoren in The Hague. The spectators were convinced of the importance of the invention and ordered Lippperhey to make three copies of the instrument for nine hundred guilders. He did not get the patent, by the way, because of the similar patent applications that came in around the same time.

News of the new invention spread quickly, as did the telescope itself, which was relatively easy to replicate. In the first half of the seventeenth century , countless copies, sometimes called ‘dutch trunks’ , were already circulating in Europe . Only a handful of these first telescopes have survived.

Scientific observations

The famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei learned about the device in 1609, while staying in Venice. After returning to the university in Padua, he decided to build a telescope himself to study the universe. This improved version of the telescope magnified twenty times and had a field of view of ten degrees. The physicist scanned the sky and made great discoveries for the time. For example, in 1610, Galileo Galilei discovered the four moons of the planet Jupiter. And a little later, Galileo Galilei was also the first man to see the sunspots on the sun and the phases of Venus. He also observed with the help of his telescope that the moon was mountainous. In 1610 Galileo Galilei published about all these discoveries in his work Siderius Nuncius. He was the first to make scientific observations with his telescope. Until then, people had mainly seen the military importance of the device.

The Dutchman Christiaan Huygens continued the scientific tradition. With his first telescope he discovered Titan, a moon near Saturn, in 1655.