Hans Lippershey that time he became a master lens grinder and spectacle maker and established a shop. He remained in Middelburg until his death, in September 1619. Hans Lippershey is known for the earliest written record of a refracting telescope, a patent he filed in 1608. His work with optical devices grew out of his work as a spectacle maker, an industry that had started in Venice and Florence in the thirteenth century, and later expanded to the Netherlands and Germany. Lippershey applied to the States General of the Netherlands on 2 October 1608 for a patent for his instrument ""for seeing
Zacharias Janssen being a spectacle maker before 1615. Albert Van Helden, Sven Dupré, Rob Van Gent, and Huib Zuidervaart in their book "Origins of the Telescope" came to the conclusion that Janssen may not have become an optician until 1616 and that the claims surrounding him as the inventor of the telescope and the microscope were the fabrications of his own son, Johannes Zachariassen, who claimed it as a matter of fame and for possible financial gain. In the years 1613–1619, Janssen was tried several times for counterfeiting coins. Janssen grew up right next to the Middleburg mint where his brother-in-law worked.