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If history has failed to furnish us with the name of the inventor of the microscope, we have very exact information as to the first experimenters upon the powers of the telescope.

"In the archives of the Hague," says Arago, "we find documents, by the aid of which Van Swieten and Moll have come to a decisive conclusion as to the first and true inventor of the telescope."

We read in these documents that a spectacle-maker of Middleburg, named John Lippershey, addressed a petition to the States-General on October 2, 1606, in which he asked leave to take out a patent, which should constitute him the only maker of this instrument, or which should confer upon him an annual pension, on the condition of not manufacturing them for other nations. The petition qualifies the instrument as serving to see distinct objects, as had already been explained to the members of the States-General.

On the 4th of October, 1608, the States-General appointed a deputy from each province to experiment on the new instrument, which was placed on a tower of the palace belonging to the Stadtholder. Huggard says that the first telescopes experimented on were a foot and a half in length.