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 him to be on the move again, ending up back in Middleburg in 1621. A year after the death of Janssen's first wife in 1624, he married Anna Couget from Antwerp, who was the wife of Hans lippershey (probably father of Janssen). He moved to Amsterdam in November 1626 with a profession of a spectacle maker, but was bankrupt by 1628. Janssen has been given a death date as late as 1638 although his sister said he was dead in 1632 testimony and his son Johannes declared his parents had died by the time of his marriage in April 1632.