Optical telescope
The telescope is more a discovery of optical craftsmen than an invention of a scientist. The lens and the properties of refracting and reflecting light had been known since antiquity and theory on how they worked were developed by ancient Greek philosophers, preserved and expanded on in the medieval Islamic world, and had reached a significantly advanced state by the time of the telescope's invention in early modern Europe. But the most significant step cited in the invention of the telescope was the development of lens manufacture for spectacles, first in Venice and Florence in the thirteenth century, and later in the spectacle making centers in both the Netherlands and Germany. It is in the Netherlands in 1608 where the first recorded optical telescopes (refracting telescopes) appeared. The invention is credited to the spectacle makers Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen in Middelburg, and the instrument-maker and optician Jacob Metius of Alkmaar.
Optical microscope
Galileo Galilei is also sometimes cited as a compound microscope inventor. After 1610 he found that he could close focus his telescope to view small objects, such as flies, close up and/or could look through the wrong end in reverse to magnify small objects. The only drawback was that his 2 foot long telescope had to be extended out to 6 feet to view objects that close. After seeing the compound microscope built by Drebbel exhibited in Rome in 1624, Galileo built his own improved version. In 1625 Giovanni Faber coined the name "microscope" for the compound microscope Galileo submitted to the Accademia dei Lincei in 1624 (Galileo had called it the ""occhiolino"" or ""little eye""). Faber coined the name from the Greek words "μικρόν" (micron) meaning "small", and "σκοπεῖν" (skopein) meaning "to look at", a name meant to be analogous with "telescope", another word coined by the Linceans.