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 Conrad von Uffenbach Netherlands he met with Campegius Vitringa, Pieter Burman the Elder, , Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Prosper Marchand, Bernard Picart, Jakob Gronovius, Herman Boerhaave, Johannes Musschenbroeck (father of the scientist Pieter van Musschenbroek), and Frederick Ruysch. In England he met with Hans Sloane. Uffenbach collected a big collection of oriental manuscripts. In 1711 his library contained about 12.000 books. After his death Johann Christoph Wolf acquired his collection. Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (22 February 1683 – 6 January 1734) was a German scholar, bibliophile, book-collector, traveller, palaeographer, and consul in Frankfurt am Main who is best known today