Hans Lippershey

Dutch inventor

• Born: c. 1570
• Birthplace: Wesel, Westphalia (now in Germany)
• Died: c. 1619
• Place of death: Middelburg, Zeeland, United Provinces (now in the Netherlands)

Lippershey, a lens grinder and spectacle maker, generally receives credit for the invention of the telescope and binoculars. The invention of the telescope was a key technological event that gave impetus to the scientific revolution.

Early Life

Almost nothing is known of the early life of Hans Lippershey (hahnz LIHP-ehrs-hi), but it is apparent that between 1570 and 1608, he became a master lenscrafter and spectacle maker and established a shop in Middelburg, the capital of the province of Zeeland, in what is now the Netherlands. In Lippershey’s shop, many different kinds of glass lenses were ground and sold; spectacles, or eyeglasses, were also manufactured and sold there.

The idea of using lenses to make distant objects appear closer to the viewer was suggested by the Englishman Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, in the thirteenth century and was most likely considered even earlier. In the mid-sixteenth century, his fellow countryman and mathematician Leonard Digges appears to have devised a successful single-lens telescopic instrument. In 1585, another Englishman, William Bourne, described the use of a convex lens to magnify objects at a distance, although his device had the disadvantage of inverting the object’s image in the lens. Bourne also hinted that a combination of a concave mirror with a convex lens might produce telescopic effects.

Before 1589, Giambattista della Porta seems to have arranged one convex and one concave lens into a telescopic combination of perhaps 1 or 2 magnifications, as did Raffaelo Gualterotti in 1590. These lens combinations were used by Porta and Gualterotti only in spectacles to sharpen and correct short-range vision; they were ineffective when they were applied to viewing faraway objects. By the early seventeenth century, however, lensmakers had improved their ability to grind strong concave lenses; concave lenses with short focal lengths were also increasingly manufactured. Thus, the makings of the first telescope—a strong concave lens combined with a weak convex lens—were available in the spectacle makers’ shops. Yet these improved lenses remained solely confined to use in eyeglasses.

Life’s Work

Extant evidence remains insufficient to answer the question of who invented the telescope, that is, by arranging a combination of one strong concave with one weak convex lens that was of appreciable use in long-distance vision. Historians still argue over assigning priority for the invention. According to some accounts of questionable validity, an early telescope was made in Italy in 1590 and was brought to the United Provinces in 1604. There is little doubt, however, that by 1608 the first working telescope—a convex objective lens combined with a concave eye lens to produce a sharp and upright image of a distant object—had been constructed. Historical records confirm that in October, 1608, three Dutchmen were in possession of such a device.

Lippershey is commonly awarded credit for inventing the telescope because he was the first to apply for a patent for such a device. The two other candidates for the title of inventor of the telescope are Zacharias Janssen and Jacob Metius. Janssen was another early seventeenth century Middelburg spectacle maker and peddler, of somewhat disreputable character. According to his son, a source many historians have discredited, Janssen constructed a telescope in 1604, after seeing an Italian model dated 1590. Metius, the son of engineer, mathematician, and burgomaster Adriaen Anthonisz, and the brother of mathematician Adriaen Metius, was a resident of Alkmaar. Historians supporting Metius’s claim contend that Metius placed an order for some lenses to be ground at Lippershey’s shop, and, while working with the lenses, Lippershey discovered his customer’s intent. Metius’s claim, however, rests more firmly on the fact that approximately two weeks after discussing Lippershey’s application, the States-General (the representative assembly of the United Provinces) discussed the patent application for a telescope similar to, but not as well made as Lippershey’s, which Metius had submitted.

Hieronymus Sirturus (Girolamo Sirtori), in Telescopium: Sive ars perficiendi novum (1618), first connected Lippershey with the invention of the instrument. In the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, opinion as to the device’s inventor oscillated between Lippershey and Janssen. Modern historians consider Lippershey and Janssen as the two likely candidates for the title of inventor of the telescope, with Lippershey possessing the strongest claim.

Those who proclaim Lippershey the inventor have related several stories describing the occasion of this invention, all with a common thread. According to the story, sometime in the summer of 1608 (or perhaps earlier) someone in Lippershey’s spectacle shop looked through two lenses at once at a weather vane on a nearby church steeple and was surprised to find that the combination of lenses made the weather vane appear closer. The stories vary as to who made this discovery; two playing children, one of Lippershey’s apprentices, and Lippershey himself have all been suggested. Lippershey then mounted two lenses in the same arrangement in a tube, thus constructing the first telescope. According to some sources, Lippershey’s telescope was constructed using a double convex lens as the object glass and a double concave lens as the eyepiece and thus did not produce an inverted image. Other accounts describe it as a combination of two convex lenses, which did invert. This telescope probably was mounted in a paper tube about 1.5 feet long, was about 1.5 inches in aperture, and had no focusing mechanism. Both types fall into the general category of refracting telescopes.

Subsequent events in the history of the invention of the telescope are more clearly documented. After constructing his telescope, Lippershey wrote the provincial government of Zeeland about his invention. They referred him to Maurice of Nassau , stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, and to the republic’s States-General. Lippershey contacted the States-General, requesting a thirty-year exclusive patent to the telescope’s production and sale. According to its official records, on October 2, 1608, the States-General discussed Lippershey’s petition, noting that he desired either an exclusive patent to the instrument or an annual pension, which would allow him to make telescopes solely for the use of his country. Lippershey’s telescope was successfully tested by members of the States-General. On October 6, the government asked whether its manufacturer could improve the telescope so that the viewer might look through it with both eyes at once. Answering that he could, Lippershey set a price for the binocular of one thousand florins.

Shortly thereafter, the spectacle maker furnished the States-General with a telescope, which a committee tested and agreed might be useful to the republic. The committee, reiterating their request for binoculars, reached an agreement with Lippershey for the price of nine hundred florins, three hundred of which they would pay in advance. On December 15, 1608, Lippershey presented the first binoculars to the States-General, received their approval and an order for two more, and requested a patent for the binoculars as well. Ultimately, however, the Dutch government concluded that, since other persons in addition to Lippershey were able to construct telescopes and binoculars, they could not grant him patents for the devices. Instead, they awarded him monetary prizes for the invention.

In 1612, Greek mathematician Joannes Dimisiani coined the word “telescope,” from the Greek “to see at a distance,” for the new device, and after 1650 telescope gradually became its commonly accepted name. The type of instrument that many believe Lippershey constructed is often referred to as a Dutch telescope.

Significance

By the end of 1608, news of the telescope—or Dutch trunks, perspectives, or cylinders, as they were called—had spread to France, and the devices themselves could be purchased in the Holy Roman Empire. Early in 1609, telescopes could be bought in Paris. By May, 1609, the news of the invention had reached Milan, and before the end of the year, telescopes were being manufactured in England.

The significance of the telescope in military operations was recognized immediately upon its invention, and it was quickly put to use in warfare. Only in the eighteenth century, however, did the telescope become a common part of surveying and navigational instrumentation.

Eventually, the telescope exerted its greatest, although less tangible, impact upon the European intellectual world. In May, 1609, Galileo, while visiting Venice, heard that a Dutchman had invented a device that made distant objects appear nearer and larger. Returning to Padua, Galileo immediately built his own, greatly improved telescope. Galileo turned his telescope to the skies and became the first person to view the Sun and planets other than with the naked eye. His observations and discoveries dealt a crushing blow to the old geocentric astronomy and paved the way for the acceptance of the heliocentric system.

At first, the telescope was used for qualitative astronomical observations only. Within a few decades, however, the telescope was applied to quantitative observation of the heavens, and it greatly increased the level of accuracy obtainable. Still, the instrument itself, and its relative the microscope, remained novelties and did not become widely accepted scientific instruments until a generation after their invention. It was not until about 1660 that telescopes and microscopes were regularly manufactured, and not until after 1665 was observation of the heavens with the naked eye abandoned and the telescope deemed indispensable in astronomical observation. From this time until the early twentieth century, the telescope remained the primary astronomical instrument.

Bibliography

Doorman, G. Patents for Inventions in the Netherlands During the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, With Notes on the Historical Development of Technics. Translated by Johann Meijer. The Hague, the Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1942. Still the best available English source of information on Lippershey’s claim to the title of inventor of the telescope. Contains an essay on the telescope and a history of the patent applications for its invention. An important and detailed study.

Drake, Stillman. The Unsung Journalist and the Origin of the Telescope. Los Angeles: Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, 1976. This work contains a facsimile of a 1608 news sheet announcing that Maurice of Nassau had received from a spectacle-maker from Middelburg, most likely Lippershey but not named, lenses that enlarge objects seen at a distance.

King, Henry C. The History of the Telescope. 1955. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1979. The standard history of the telescope that should be read by everyone interested in its invention and development. Contains an excellent summary of the device’s early history and what is known of Lippershey’s work.

Maddison, Francis. “Early Astronomical and Mathematical Instruments: A Brief Survey of Sources and Modern Studies.” History of Science 2 (1963): 17-50. This article contains an excellent, annotated bibliography of literature on the telescope and related instruments.

Moll, Gerard. “On the First Invention of Telescopes.” Journal of the Royal Institution 1 (1831): 319-332, 483-496. Invaluable, though somewhat hard to find, as a source of information about the early history of the telescope. It discusses the patent applications made to the States-General of the United Provinces and provides excerpts from the official state records concerning Lippershey’s and others’ applications.

Singer, Charles. “Steps Leading to the Invention of the First Optical Apparatus.” In Studies in the History and Method of Science, edited by Charles Singer. Vol. 2. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1921. This essay concisely and chronologically examines developments in optical theory and technology from antiquity through the construction of the first telescopes in the early seventeenth century. Excellently documented, the work includes references to, and excerpts from, the works of a wide range of scientists and inventors. Singer presents a discussion of the claims of Lippershey and others to the instrument’s invention.

Van Helden, Albert. “The Historical Problem of the Invention of the Telescope.” History of Science 13 (1975): 251-263. An authoritative discussion of the debate over who should receive credit for the invention. Discusses the claims of Lippershey, Janssen, and Metius, based on an examination of early historical documents and treatises on the history of the telescope.

Wolf, Abraham. A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 2d ed. Vol. 1. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968. An easily accessible work that gives a concise history of the invention of the telescope and its subsequent development by Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The work shows the immediate and long-range consequences of the application of the telescope to astronomy and also discusses the telescope as one of several crucial technological developments of the period.