Here:

http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/stories/geschi.html

Having Lippershey as the one who got the telescope started may
be the astronomical equivalent of saying Abner Doubleday invented
the sport of baseball. Everyone wants a specific starting point and
a single inventor for clarity and cleaness, but history of course
never is.

It would not surprise me in the least if folks were using telescopes
way before Galileo and such acts are lost to history. A prime
example of the ancients having more advanced technology and
knowledge than we give them credit for due to a scarcity of
historical records on such subjects is the Antikythera Mechanism, a
celestial computer made by the ancient Greeks around 150 CE.

Had it not accidentally been sunk at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, it most likely would have been melted down in a later less enlightened age and lost to history. It is proof that the ancients
knew more and had more sophisticated devices than we have
given them credit for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism