Galileo Galilei the use of the compasses for 120 lire. In about 1593, Galileo constructed a thermometer, using the expansion and contraction of air in a bulb to move water in an attached tube. In 1609, Galileo was, along with Englishman Thomas Harriot and others, among the first to use a refracting telescope as an instrument to observe stars, planets or moons. The name "telescope" was coined for Galileo's instrument by a Greek mathematician, Giovanni Demisiani, at a banquet held in 1611 by Prince Federico Cesi to make Galileo a member of his Accademia dei Lincei. The name was derived from the
Zacharias Janssen The claim that Zacharias Janssen invented the telescope and the microscope dates back to the year 1655. During that time Dutch diplomat Willem Boreel conducted an investigation trying to figure out who invented the telescope. He had a local magistrate in Middelburg follow up on a 45 year old recollection of a spectacle maker named "Hans" who told a young Boreel in 1610 about inventing the telescope. In his investigation the magistrate was contacted by a then unknown claimant, Middelburg spectacle maker Johannes Zachariassen, the son of Zacharias Janssen, who testified under oath that his father invented the telescope and