The question of priority of discovery has never been settled.

It is admitted, however, that the chief honors belong to the opticians of the Netherlands.
As early as the year 1590 the Dutch optician Zacharias Jensen placed a concave and a convex lens respectively at the ends of a tube about eighteen inches long, and used this instrument for the purpose of magnifying small objects--producing, in short, a crude microscope.

Some years later, Johannes Lippershey, of whom not much is known except that he died in 1619, experimented with a somewhat similar combination of lenses, and made the startling observation that the weather-vane on a distant church-steeple seemed to be brought much nearer when viewed through the lens.

The combination of lenses he employed is that still used in the construction of opera-glasses; the Germans still call such a combination a Dutch telescope.
Doubtless a large number of experimenters took the matter up and the fame of the new instrument spread rapidly abroad.

Galileo, down in Italy, heard rumors of this remarkable contrivance, through the use of which it was said "distant objects might be seen as clearly as those near at hand." He at once set to work to construct for himself a similar instrument, and his efforts were so far successful that at first he "saw objects three times as near and nine times enlarged." Continuing his efforts, he presently so improved his glass that objects were enlarged almost a thousand times and made to appear thirty times nearer than when seen with the naked eye.