Italian glassmakers were possibly the first to find that via a certain technique they could make curved pieces that bent light in such a way as to magnify distant objects. Hans Lippershey started out working with that technique, making lenses for spectacles. After fleeing Spanish prosecuting of protestants to Middelburg, Netherlands, he settled down to marry and have children, and to his fortune those children might have been the discoverers of his most famous invention.

On this day, October 2, in 1608 The States-General of the Netherlands took note of a patent filed by Hans Lippershay for a “certain device by means of which all things at a very great distance can be seen as if they were nearby, by looking through glasses”.

Lippershay was said to have been inspired by his children playing around the workshop, who took up two of his lenses and peered through them at the same time, noticing the weather vane on a nearby church steeple appeared much closer. His patent, for a pair of such lenses attached to the ends of a tube, was ultimately rejected –the States General felt the technology could not be kept secret — he was paid handsomely for the two binoculars he produced for the States General.