Optics began with the development of lenses
by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians.
Lenses were often polished quartz crystals.
The ancient Romans and Greeks filled glass
spheres with water to make lenses.
Plato first articulated the idea that visual perception
is accomplished by rays emitted by the eyes.
During the Middle Ages, Greek ideas about optics
were resurrected and extended by Muslims.
In the early 11th century, Alhazen explored reflection
and refraction put forward the idea that light reflected
in all directions in straight lines from all points of the
objects being viewed and then entered the eye.
The first wearable eyeglasses were invented in Italy
around 1286. Experimentation with lenses led directly
to the invention of the compound optical microscope
around 1595, and the refracting telescope in 1608.
Optical theory progressed in the mid-17th century
with treatises written by philosopher René Descartes.
Isaac Newton expanded Descartes' ideas into a
corpuscle theory of light, famously determining that
white light was a mix of colors which can be
separated into its component parts with a prism.
In 1690, Christian Huygens proposed a wave theory
for light based on suggestions that had been made by
Robert Hooke in 1664.
In the 19th century, Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean
Fresnel conducted experiments on the interference of
light that firmly established light's wave nature. Wave
optics was successfully unified with electromagnetic
theory by James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s.
Thank you. I like writing an occasional educational poem. Some are in verse, but that takes a lot more time.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Colours! ! With the muse of experiments. Nice work.
Thanks. The prism is wonderful for an instant rainbow effect.