The first man-made optical instruments were the looking glass, the magnifying glass and the burning glass. These were known by the fifth century BC. The next advance was eighteen centuries later when similar positive lenses were used to correct presbyopia. As lens making technology advanced to fulfill this demand, negative lenses were invented and used to improve the vision of near sighted people. Soon there were spectacle shops dotting Europe, and it was inevitable that people would start to play with combinations of lenses. This all came together at the end of the sixteenth century when the microscope and the telescope were invented in several places independently.