Roger Bacon (chapter III., § 67) had claimed to have devised a combination of lenses enabling distant objects to be seen as if they were near; a similar invention was probably made by our countryman _Leonard Digges_ (who died about 1571), and was described also by the Italian _Porta_ in 1558. If such an instrument was actually made by any one of the three, which is not certain, the discovery at any rate attracted no attention and was again lost. The effective discovery of the telescope was made in Holland in 1608 by _Hans Lippersheim_ (?-1619), a spectacle-maker of Middleburg, and almost simultaneously by two other Dutchmen, but whether independently or not it is impossible to say. Early in the following year the report of the invention reached Galilei, who, though without any detailed information as to the structure of the instrument, succeeded after a few trials in arranging two lenses—one convex and one concave—in a tube in such a way as to enlarge the apparent size of an object looked at; his first instrument made objects appear three times nearer, consequently three times greater (in breadth and height), and he was soon able to make telescopes which in the same way magnified thirty-fold. That the new instrument might be applied to celestial as well as to terrestrial objects was a fairly obvious idea, which was acted on almost at once by the English mathematician _Thomas Harriot_ (1560-1621), by _Simon Marius_ (1570-1624) in Germany, and by Galilei. That the credit of first using the telescope for astronomical purposes is almost invariably attributed to Galilei, though his first observations were in all probability slightly later in date than those of Harriot and Marius, is to a great extent justified by the persistent way in which he examined object after object, whenever there seemed any reasonable prospect of results following, by the energy and acuteness with which he followed up each clue, by the independence of mind with which he interpreted his observations, and above all by the insight with which he realised their astronomical importance. 119. His first series of telescopic discoveries were published early in 1610 in a little book called _Sidereus Nuncius_, or _The Sidereal Messenger_. His first observations at once threw a flood of light on the nature of our nearest celestial neighbour, the moon. It was commonly believed that the moon, like the other celestial bodies, was perfectly smooth and spherical, and the cause of the familiar dark markings on the surface was quite unknown.[67] [Illustration: FIG. 53.—One of Galilei’s drawings of the moon. From the _Sidereus Nuncius_.]