The first documented "spyglass" is generally credited to a Dutch lens grinder named Hans Lipperhey, who found that two lenses, properly placed, could magnify distant objects. He applied for a patent in 1608. Read more
Colin Ronan is an historian of science and author of several works on astronomy. He was President of the British Astronomical Association in 1989-91. In his second presidential address lay years, he put forward the claim that the credit for the invention of the reflecting telescope should go to Leonard Digges, an English mathematician and surveyor, whose device predates rival Dutch claims of 1608 by over thirty years.
New evidence suggests the telescope may have been invented in Spain, not the Netherlands or Italy as has previously been assumed. The findings, outlined in the magazine History Today, suggest the telescope's creator could have been a spectacle-maker based in Gerona, Spain.
The earliest came on April 10th, 1593, when Don Pedro de Carolona passed down una ullera larga guarnida de lautó (a long eyeglass/telescope decorated with brass) to his wife Doña María de Cardona y Eril. When she died on December 13th, 1596, the same object was inherited by their son Enrique de Cardona. Simón de Guilleuma was intrigued by the notary`s careful description and inferred that, as it would probably have been kept in an arquillita (small lockable casket) with other objects such as letters, it could have been no longer than 20cm.
Four hundred years after a Dutch spectacle maker laid claim to inventing the world's first telescope, documents have emerged suggesting a Spaniard may have got there first. Historians generally credit Hans Lipperhey, who lived in the coastal town of Middelburg, with creating the first telescope, which he demonstrated to the Hague government on September 25 1608. But according to a recently discovered will, a brass-decorated telescope was among objects bequeathed by a Spaniard, Don Pedro de Carolona, to his widow in Barcelona in 1593.