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
Eyepiece microscopes, gun-sights, and other devices. Some of these designs are described in more detail below. The simple negative lens placed before the focus of the objective has the advantage of presenting an erect image but with limited field of view better suited to low magnification. It is suspected this type of lens was used in some of the first refracting telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in about 1608. It was also used in Galileo Galilei's 1609 telescope design which gave this type of eyepiece arrangement the name ""Galilean"". This type of eyepiece is still used in very cheap telescopes,