History of optics
Early history
In the fifth century BCE, Empedocles postulated that everything was composed of four elements; fire, air, earth and water. He believed that Aphrodite made the human eye out of the four elements and that she lit the fire in the eye which shone out from the eye making sight possible. If this were true, then one could see during the night just as well as during the day, so Empedocles postulated an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun. He stated that light has a finite speed.[2]
Separate considerable developments in optics were also achieved in ancient China.[3]
In his Optics Greek mathematician Euclid observed that "things seen under a greater angle appear greater, and those under a lesser angle less, while those under equal angles appear equal". In the 36 propositions that follow, Euclid relates the apparent size of an object to its distance from the eye and investigates the apparent shapes of cylinders and cones when viewed from different angles. Pappus believed these results to be important in astronomy and included Euclid's Optics, along with his Phaenomena, in the Little Astronomy, a compendium of smaller works to be studied before the Syntaxis (Almagest) of Ptolemy.
In 55 BC, Lucretius, a Roman atomist, wrote:
For from whatsoever distances fires can throw us their light and breathe their warm heat upon our limbs, they lose nothing of the body of their flames because of the interspaces, their fire is no whit shrunken to the sight.[4]
In his Catoptrica, Hero of Alexandria showed by a geometrical method that the actual path taken by a ray of light reflected from a plane mirror is shorter than any other reflected path that might be drawn between the source and point of observation.
The Indian
Geometrical optics
The early writers discussed here treated vision more as a geometrical than as a physical, physiological, or psychological problem. The first known author of a treatise on geometrical optics was the geometer Euclid (c. 325 BC–265 BC). Euclid began his study of optics as he began his study of geometry, with a set of self-evident axioms.
- Lines (or visual rays) can be drawn in a straight line to the object.
- Those lines falling upon an object form a cone.
- Those things upon which the lines fall are seen.
- Those things seen under a larger angle appear larger.
- Those things seen by a higher ray, appear higher.
- Right and left rays appear right and left.
- Things seen within several angles appear clearer.
Euclid did not define the physical nature of these visual rays but, using the principles of geometry, he discussed the effects of perspective and the rounding of things seen at a distance.
Where Euclid had limited his analysis to simple direct vision, Hero of Alexandria (c. AD 10–70) extended the principles of geometrical optics to consider problems of reflection (catoptrics). Unlike Euclid, Hero occasionally commented on the physical nature of visual rays, indicating that they proceeded at great speed from the eye to the object seen and were reflected from smooth surfaces but could become trapped in the porosities of unpolished surfaces.[5] This has come to be known as emission theory.[6]
Hero demonstrated the equality of the angle of incidence and reflection on the grounds that this is the shortest path from the object to the observer. On this basis, he was able to define the fixed relation between an object and its image in a plane mirror. Specifically, the image appears to be as far behind the mirror as the object really is in front of the mirror.
Like Hero,
Optics documents Ptolemy's studies of
In the Islamic world
Al-Kindi (c. 801–873) was one of the earliest important optical writers in the Islamic world. In a work known in the west as De radiis stellarum, al-Kindi developed a theory "that everything in the world ... emits rays in every direction, which fill the whole world."[10]
This theory of the active power of rays had an influence on later scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham, Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon.[11]
Ibn al-Haytham (known in as Alhacen or Alhazen in Western Europe), writing in the 1010s, received both Ibn Sahl's treatise and a partial Arabic translation of Ptolemy's Optics. He produced a comprehensive and systematic analysis of Greek optical theories.[15] Ibn al-Haytham's key achievement was twofold: first, to insist, against the opinion of Ptolemy, that vision occurred because of rays entering the eye; the second was to define the physical nature of the rays discussed by earlier geometrical optical writers, considering them as the forms of light and color.[16] He then analyzed these physical rays according to the principles of geometrical optics. He wrote many books on optics, most significantly the
In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236–1311) and his student Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1260–1320) continued the work of Ibn al-Haytham, and they were among the first to give the correct explanations for the rainbow phenomenon. Al-Fārisī published his findings in his Kitab Tanqih al-Manazir (The Revision of [Ibn al-Haytham's] Optics).[23]
In medieval Europe
The English bishop Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175–1253) wrote on a wide range of scientific topics at the time of the origin of the medieval university and the recovery of the works of Aristotle. Grosseteste reflected a period of transition between the Platonism of early medieval learning and the new Aristotelianism, hence he tended to apply mathematics and the Platonic metaphor of light in many of his writings. He has been credited with discussing light from four different perspectives: an epistemology of light, a metaphysics or cosmogony of light, an etiology or physics of light, and a theology of light.[24]
Setting aside the issues of epistemology and theology, Grosseteste's cosmogony of light describes the origin of the universe in what may loosely be described as a medieval "big bang" theory. Both his biblical commentary, the Hexaemeron (1230 x 35), and his scientific On Light (1235 x 40), took their inspiration from Genesis 1:3, "God said, let there be light", and described the subsequent process of creation as a natural physical process arising from the generative power of an expanding (and contracting) sphere of light.[25]
His more general consideration of light as a primary agent of physical causation appears in his On Lines, Angles, and Figures where he asserts that "a natural agent propagates its power from itself to the recipient" and in On the Nature of Places where he notes that "every natural action is varied in strength and weakness through variation of lines, angles and figures."[26]
The English
Several later works, including the influential A Moral Treatise on the Eye (Latin: Tractatus Moralis de Oculo) by Peter of Limoges (1240–1306), helped popularize and spread the ideas found in Bacon's writings.[28]
Another English Franciscan,
Like his predecessors,
Theodoric of Freiberg (ca. 1250–ca. 1310) was among the first in Europe to provide the correct scientific explanation for the rainbow phenomenon,[31] as well as Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236–1311) and his student Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1260–1320) mentioned above.
Renaissance and Early Modern
In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. In 1704, Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ...and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[35]
Diffractive optics
The effects of
Lenses and lensmaking
There is disputed archeological evidence of use of lenses in antiquity, spanning several millennia.[38] It has been suggested that glass eye covers in hieroglyphs from the Old Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2686–2181 BC) were functional simple glass meniscus lenses.[39] Similarly the so-called Nimrud lens, a rock crystal artifact dated to the 7th century BC, may have been used as a magnifying glass or may have been a decoration.[40][41][42][43][44]
The earliest written record of magnification dates back to the 1st century AD, when Seneca the Younger, a tutor of Emperor Nero, wrote: "Letters, however small and indistinct, are seen enlarged and more clearly through a globe or glass filled with water".[45] Emperor Nero is also said to have watched the gladiatorial games using an emerald as a corrective lens.[46]
Between the 11th and 13th century "
The earliest known working telescopes were the
The earliest known examples of compound microscopes, which combine an objective lens near the specimen with an eyepiece to view a real image, appeared in Europe around 1620.[51] The design is very similar to the telescope and, like that device, its inventor is unknown. Again claims revolve around the spectacle making centers in the Netherlands including claims it was invented in 1590 by Zacharias Janssen and/or his father, Hans Martens,[52][53][54] claims it was invented by rival spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey,[55] and claims it was invented by expatriate Cornelis Drebbel who was noted to have a version in London in 1619.[56][57] Galileo Galilei (also sometimes cited as a compound microscope inventor) seems to have found after 1609 that he could close focus his telescope to view small objects and, after seeing a compound microscope built by Drebbel exhibited in Rome in 1624, built his own improved version.[58][59][60] The name microscope was coined by Giovanni Faber, who gave that name to Galileo Galilei's compound microscope in 1625.[61]
Quantum optics
Light is made up of particles called
This changed with the invention of the maser in 1953 and the laser in 1960. Laser science—research into principles, design and application of these devices—became an important field, and the quantum mechanics underlying the laser's principles was studied now with more emphasis on the properties of light, and the name quantum optics became customary.
As laser science needed good theoretical foundations, and also because research into these soon proved very fruitful, interest in quantum optics rose. Following the work of
Other remarkable results are the
Today's fields of interest among quantum optics researchers include
See also
Notes
- ISBN 0-19-283098-8.
- ISBN 978-0-486-27495-9.
- ^ Ling-An Wu; Gui Lu Long; Qihuang Gong; Guang-Can Guo (October 2015). "Optics in Ancient China". AAPPS Bulletin. Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
- ^ Lucretius, 1910. On the nature of things, Bok V ll 561-591, translated by Cyril Bailey, Oxford University press.
- D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), pp. 14-15.
- ^ S2CID 20759821.
- ^ D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), p. 16; A. M. Smith, Ptolemy's search for a law of refraction: a case-study in the classical methodology of 'saving the appearances' and its limitations, Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 26 (1982), 221-240; Ptolemy's procedure is reported in the fifth chapter of his Optics.
- ISBN 0-393-04371-1.
- ^ "A brief history of Optics". Archived from the original on 2013-11-11. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
- ^ Cited in D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), p. 19.
- S2CID 40895875
- ^ Rashed, R., Géométrie et dioptrique au Xe siècle: Ibn Sahl, al-Quhi et Ibn al-Haytham. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993
- S2CID 144361526.
- PMID 11634474
- S2CID 10792576.
- ^ "How does light travel through transparent bodies? Light travels through transparent bodies in straight lines only.... We have explained this exhaustively in our Book of Optics. But let us now mention something to prove this convincingly: the fact that light travels in straight lines is clearly observed in the lights which enter into dark rooms through holes.... [T]he entering light will be clearly observable in the dust which fills the air." – Alhazen, Treatise on Light (رسالة في الضوء), translated into English from German by M. Schwarz, from "Abhandlung über das Licht", J. Baarmann (editor and translator from Arabic to German, 1882) Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol 36, as cited by Samuel Sambursky (1974), Physical thought from the Pre-socratics to the quantum physicists
- ^ D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), pp. 58-86; Nader El-Bizri 'A Philosophical Perspective on Alhazen's Optics', Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 15 (2005), 189–218.
- ^ "International Year of Light: Ibn al Haytham, pioneer of modern optics celebrated at UNESCO". UNESCO. Retrieved 2 June 2018.
- ^ "The 'first true scientist'". 2009. Retrieved 2 June 2018.
- ^ George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. 1, p. 710.
- ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Al-Biruni", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- S2CID 144855447
- ^ J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, MacTutor Math History: Kamal al-Din Abu'l Hasan Muhammad Al-Farisi, "The discovery of the theory should presumably be ascribed to al-Shirazi, its elaboration to al-Farisi"—C Boyer, The rainbow : from myth to mathematics (New York, 1959), 127-129.
- ^ D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), pp. 94-99.
- ^ R. W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 136-9, 205-6.
- ^ A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 110
- ^ D. C. Lindberg, "Roger Bacon on Light, Vision, and the Universal Emanation of Force", pp. 243-275 in Jeremiah Hackett, ed., Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 245-250; Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), pp. 107-18; The Beginnings of Western Science, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1992, p. 313.
- ISBN 9781139443814.
- ^ D. C. Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics: Perspectiva communis, (Madison, Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1970), pp. 12-32; Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), pp. 116-18.
- ^ D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), pp. 118-20.
- . Retrieved 2022-02-16.
- ^ Caspar, Kepler, pp 142–146
- OCLC 51095685
- ^ "René Descartes", Encarta, Microsoft, 2008, archived from the original on 2009-10-29, retrieved 2007-08-15
- S2CID 170669199quoting Opticks
- ^ Jean Louis Aubert (1760), Memoires pour l'histoire des sciences et des beaux arts, Paris: Impr. de S. A. S; Chez E. Ganeau, p. 149
- ^ Sir David Brewster (1831), A Treatise on Optics, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green and John Taylor, p. 95
- S2CID 191384703.
- ^ Jay M. Enoch, Remarkable lenses and eye units in statues from the Egyptian Old Kingdom (ca. 4500 years ago): properties, timeline, questions requiring resolution. Proceedings Volume 3749, 18th Congress of the International Commission for Optics; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.354722 Event: ICO XVIII 18th Congress of the International Commission for Optics, 1999, San Francisco, CA, United States, 19 July 1999 [1]
- ^ Whitehouse, David (1 July 1999). "World's oldest telescope?". BBC News. Retrieved 10 May 2008.
- ^ "The Nimrud lens/The Layard lens". Collection database. The British Museum. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
- ^ D. Brewster (1852). "On an account of a rock-crystal lens and decomposed glass found in Niniveh". Die Fortschritte der Physik (in German). Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. p. 355.
- S2CID 96668398.
- ^ PMID 9574655
- ^ Pliny the Elder. "Natural History". Retrieved 2008-04-27.
- ^ (Wade & Finger 2001)
- ^ (Elliott 1966): Chapter 1
- ^ The invention of spectacles, How and where glasses may have begun, The College of Optometrists, college-optometrists.org
- ISBN 9780871692597.
- ISBN 978-0471692140.
- ^ claim made by Zacharias Janssen's son in 1655
- ^ Sir Norman Lockyer (1876). Nature Volume 14.
- ISBN 978-90-6984-615-6.
- ^ "Who Invented the Microscope?". Live Science. 14 September 2013. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
- ISBN 978-9004186712.
- ^ William Rosenthal, Spectacles and Other Vision Aids: A History and Guide to Collecting, Norman Publishing, 1996, page 391 - 392
- ^ Raymond J. Seeger, Men of Physics: Galileo Galilei, His Life and His Works, Elsevier - 2016, page 24
- ^ J. William Rosenthal, Spectacles and Other Vision Aids: A History and Guide to Collecting, Norman Publishing, 1996, page 391
- ^ uoregon.edu, Galileo Galilei (Excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica)
- ISBN 0-224-05044-3
- ISBN 978-0-19-517324-6.
Works cited
- Elliott, Robert Stratman (1966). Electromagnetics. McGraw-Hill.
- Wade, Nicholas J.; Finger, Stanley (2001), "The eye as an optical instrument: from camera obscura to Helmholtz's perspective", Perception, 30 (10): 1157–77, S2CID 8185797
Further reading
- Howard, Ian P.; Wade, Nicholas J. (1996), "Ptolemy's contributions to the geometry of binocular vision", Perception, 25 (10): 1189–201, S2CID 34431898.
- Morelon, Régis; Rashed, Roshdi (1996), OCLC 34731151.
- Wade, Nicholas J. (1998), A Natural History of Vision, Cambridge, Massachusetts: OCLC 37246567.
External links
- History of Optics (audio mp3) by Simon Schaffer, Professor in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, Jim Bennett, Director of the Museum of the History of Science at the University of Oxford and Emily Winterburn, Curator of Astronomy at the National Maritime Museum (recorded by the BBC).