Controversy over telescope origin

New evidence suggests the telescope may have been invented in Spain, not the Netherlands or Italy as has previously been assumed.

The findings, outlined in the magazine History Today, suggest the telescope's creator could have been a spectacle-maker based in Gerona, Spain.

The first refracting telescopes were thought to have appeared in the Netherlands in 1608.

But the first examples may actually have been made for Spanish merchants.

The inventor, according to historian Nick Pelling, could have been a man called Juan Roget, who died between 1617 and 1624.