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
Zacharias Heyns Zacharias Heyns Zacharias Heyns (1566 – 1630) was a Netherlands printer and engraver from the Northern Netherlands. Heyns was born in Antwerp as the son of the schoolmaster Peeter Heyns, who was known for his French schoolbooks and translations from Dutch to French and back. The Heyns family moved to Frankfurt after the fall of Antwerp and when the elder Heyns moved to Stade in 1592, Zacharias became a publisher in Amsterdam near the Oude Kerk and married Anne Hureau. His first published works were a few Latin books by Eilhard Lubinus and schoolbooks by his father, and after his