Telescope earliest existing record of a telescope was a 1608 patent submitted to the government in the Netherlands by Middelburg spectacle maker Hans Lippershey for a refracting telescope. The actual inventor is unknown but word of it spread through Europe. [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]] heard about it and, in 1609, built his own version, and made his telescopic observations of celestial objects. The idea that the [[Objective (optics)|objective]], or light-gathering element, could be a mirror instead of a lens was being investigated soon after the invention of the refracting telescope. The potential advantages of using [[parabolic reflector|parabolic mirrors]]—reduction of [[spherical aberration]] and no
History of religion in the Netherlands immigrants from Germany, Flanders and France and developed a Protestant character. Orthodox Calvinists converted a belt of land from the south west (the province of Zeeland), via the Veluwe, to the north of the Netherlands (until the city of Staphorst) during the 17th and even as late as the 18th centuries. This remains Orthodox Calvinist until this day. During the Twelve Years' Truce (between 1609 and 1621) in the Eighty Years' War, the Netherlands saw a civil war along religious lines. The Synod of Dort tried to bring an end to an internal theological conflict within the Calvinist church between