OVERVIEW

Optics tends to be a discipline whose state of the art is advanced by the needs of users. Generally, developments in optics seem to have been linked to specific engineering applications. Optics of antiquity, until about 1700, existed mainly as an aid to vision. From about 1600 to World War II, the main impetus for optical development was to develop better instruments for astronomy, window glass, and other industrial applications. Navigation and vision aid also played a key role in this era, but most major developments were somehow geared to astronomy (e.g., the Foucault knife edge test, interferometers, new telescopes, and so on). Military needs dominated optics development from World War II to the 1990s. In the 1990s, the military faded as the driving force, to be replaced by communication and computing. It can be estimated that, in a matter of decades (say, 2020), the emphasis will again shift. It is conjecture to predict what the driving force will be, but it might be something like bionics or robotics.

The science of optics began thousands of years ago. Archeological findings involving the Phoenicians suggest that powered lenses were made over 3000 years ago. Clearly, all of the ancient cultures studied light and its interaction with matter. Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Euclid, Pythagoras, and Democritus all wrote extensively about vision and optics. Seneca (4 B.C. to A.D. 45) was the first to write about observing light divided into colors by a prism. To these early investigators, the world was full of...