Refracting telescope
Refractors were the earliest type of optical telescope. The first practical refracting telescopes appeared in the Netherlands about 1608, and were credited to three individuals, Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, spectacle-makers in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar. Galileo Galilei, happening to be in Venice in about the month of May 1609, heard of the invention and constructed a version of his own. Galileo then communicated the details of his invention to the public, and presented the instrument itself to the Doge Leonardo Donato, sitting in full council.
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.