Optical History

• The earliest known optical lenses were made from Quartz.

• Euclid (300 BC, known as the “Father of Geometry”) discovered the geometrical side of light. Hero of Alexandria (10 AD - 70 AD) focused more on the rays of light which led to “Fermet’s Principle of Least Time”. Pierre de Fermat (over a thousand years later, (1607-1665) is most known for “Fermet’s Principle” which states that the path taken by a ray between two given points is the path that can be traversed in the least time.

• William Herschel (1800) discovered infrared radiation (IR), up until then visible light was the only known light on the electromagnetic spectrum. This discovery occurred while studying the temperature of light based on it’s color as it passed through a prism. He realized that the heat of light increased as it passed beyond RED. He termed these non-visible light rays as “calorific”. The very next year, Johann Ritter discovered light rays beyond VIOLET, or Ultraviolet (UV) Rays. Ritter termed these light rays as “Chemical Rays” because they caused certain chemical reactions.

• In 1865 John Clerk Maxwell proposed the Electromagnetic Wave Theory as well as the first durable color photograph in 1861. His work on the Electromagnetic Wave Theory let to the proof of Radio Waves. He stated that if we took 3 Black & White photos of the same picture where taken with RED, GREEN, & BLUE filters and then projected onto a screen with similar filters the result would be an image of the picture with true color.

• William Röntgen discovered X-Rays in 1895.

• Paul Villard discovered Gamma Radiation in the 1900s.