The invention of the telescope is unclear, but the basic concept was recognized in 1230. In 1608, Hans Lippershey, Zacharias Janssen, and Jacob Metius are credited with inventing the telescope. Galileo Galilei improved the telescope and made famous discoveries. Reflecting telescopes were invented by Leonard Digges but were impractical until Isaac Newton built the first practical one in 1668.
Who exactly invented the telescope is a bit of a fuzzy question. Since before recorded history, people have played with simple lenses made of rock crystal (quartz), and the basic concept of a telescope appears to have been recognized in 1230 or earlier. The late 13th century saw the invention of convex lenses to correct farsightedness, while concave lenses for myopia were invented in the 13th by Nicola Cusano. Since a basic telescope is just a combination of a convex and concave lens in a tube mount, the basic possibility was there. Indeed, various late 16th-century writings in England suggest that telescopes may have been developed and used there by at least some individuals.
Yet it wasn’t until 1608 in the Netherlands that telescopes really caught on. The credit for the invention of the telescope traditionally goes to three people: Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, eyeglass makers working together in the city of Middleburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar. Soon after, telescopes began to be produced in greater numbers and spread throughout Europe as novelty items. So 1608 is the officially recognized year for the invention of the telescope. These early telescopes only magnified distant objects by a factor of about three.
When telescopes were still extremely new, in 1609, the famous Italian astronomer and physicist, Galileo Galilei, learned about the basic working concept of the telescope during a visit to the city of Venice. As soon as he returned to his homeland, in Padua, he immediately built one, simply by putting together a convex and a concave lens in a tube. He made an improved version of it and showed it to the lord of Venice, Leonardo Donato, who was very impressed. Galileo was therefore established for life in his chair and his salary was doubled.
Galileo improved the telescope until it had a magnifying power of thirty-three diameters. He then used his telescope to discover the moons of Jupiter, the spots on the Sun, the phases of Venus and the hills and valleys of the Moon. These discoveries made him famous to this day, and therefore telescopes of this type are still called Galilean telescopes.
The other main type of telescope, the reflecting telescope, was invented by the English surveyor Leonard Digges in the mid-16th century, but it was relatively impractical and never became widespread in his day. It fell to Isaac Newton, the great physicist, who in 16 built the first practical reflecting telescope.
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