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
Water supply and sanitation in the Netherlands remaining 40% comes from surface water, mainly in the West where water utilities pump from the Rhine and the Meuse because groundwater is brackish. The government encourages the use of surface water by charging a groundwater abstraction levy. Average municipal water use is among the lowest in developed countries at only 128 litre/capita/day in 2004. 96% of water users are metered and a portion of their bill - typically about one half - is based on actual consumption. Infrastructure. There are 116,000 km of water pipes in the Netherlands. Human Resources. The ten regional water companies had 4,938 full-time equivalent