Genius Optical Inventions: From the X-Ray to the Telescope
planets Galileo 1564 1642 built telescopes to look at objects both close up and far off from insects to
CONTENTS Into the Light Making Light Seeing Near Seeing Far The Camera Surveying Making Movies Viewing in 3D Scanning the Body Sonar and Radar Laser Light Crazy Inventions Daft and Deft Predictions Index 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 I love to read by candlelight
INTO THE LIGHT When our early ancestors first learned to make fire and control it they altered human destiny Now able to make light and heat they no longer had to go to bed at sundown They could stay warm at night and cook food No more raw meat 3D projector 1890s Eating better food may have even been a trigger that led to our larger brain size making us more clever Fire also helped early humans keep pesky bugs and wild beasts at bay And it helped them hollow out canoes for traveling the oceans and finding new land Of course these advances happened a long time ago and we can’t say exactly Magnifying glass bowl at least 2,000 years ago 6
who invented them They stand more as big leaps forward in human society As well as making light we’ve learned to focus it through a lens When humans first polished lenses from rock crystals or used glass globes full of water they found that these simple lenses could bend light rays and show things magnified or enlarged Light is the important bit in microscopes telescopes spectacles and movie cameras Satellite imaging 1959 Come with us on a roundabout journey from those early fire making days to the modern era of lasers and satellite photography We’ll explore some of the more unexpected ways of looking at things such as radio waves microwaves X-rays and sound waves which have given us radar and medical scanners And we’ll poke light fun at some of the crazier inventions people have dreamed up such as spectacles for chickens and horses X-rays 1895 Hooke’s telescope 1665 7
