Hans Lippershey (Wesel 1570– Middelburg 1619) was a Dutch lensmaker, born in Wesel, in western Germany. He settled in Middelburg in the Netherlands, was married in 1594, and become a citizen in 1602.

He was credited with creating and disseminating designs for the first practical telescope. 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 (beating out Jacob Metius by a few weeks) 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 workshop, but this may be apocryphal. The son of Zacharias Janssen of Middelburg subsequently testified that Lippershey had stolen the idea for his instrument from his father -at a time when Janssen would have only been two years old.

Lippershey crater, on the Moon, is named after him.

External links

• The Galileo Project — Lippershey biography.

Sources

• Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House, 1983), 315.

1570 births | 1619 deaths | Opticians | Dutch inventors

Hans Lippershey | האנס ליפרסהי | Hans Lippershey