Home > Hans Lippershey

Crude telescopes and spyglasses may have been created much earlier, but Lippershey is believed to be the first to apply for a patent for his design and make it available for general use in 1608. He failed to receive a patent but was handsomely rewarded by the Dutch government for copies of his design. A description of Lippershey's instrument quickly reached Galileo Galilei, who created a working design in 1609, with which he made the observations found in his Sidereus Nuncius of 1610.

There is a legend that Lippershey's children actually discovered the telescope while playing with flawed lenses in their father's workshopA workshop is a room or smaller building which contains tools and/or machinery for making or repairing things. Apart from the larger manufactories, workshops were the only places of production in the days before industrialisation. A workshop is also a gat, but this may be apocryphaIntro In every-day conversation, apocryphal means "of questionable (or lacking) authenticity", describing a story nevertheless frequently told and widely believed. In literature, apocrypha refers to works that purport to have been created by somebody othel.