Optical Lenses by Amy Hogan The earliest known optical lenses date back to 750 BC in the assyrian empire. The first lense was know as the layard lense and was most likely used as a magnifying glass or to start fires. Many similar lenses have been found from ancient egypt, babylon, and greece. Ancient egypt and greece would fill glass spheres with water to achieve the same affect of lenses. Coincidentally lenses wasn't thought of until the middle ages. The earliest lenses were made from polished crystal, often quartz. The process evolved over the years from crystal to glass spheres to eventually, glass lenses. Some lenses from ancient egypt date back much farther than those from the assyrian empire, but some theorists say that these early …show more content…
The basic atoms are those of earth, fire, water, and air. Light rays are taken to be a stream of high velocity of fire atoms. The particles of light can exhibit different characteristics depending on the speed and the arrangements of the fire atoms. Around the first century BC, the Vishnu Purana refers to sunlight as "the seven rays of the sun". Fifth Century BC, empedocles hypothesized everything was made up of the four elements. Empedocles believed that aphrodite created the human eye out of earth, fire, water, and air. Aphrodite lit the fire in our eyes allowing us to see. As great as that idea is, it would mean we would be able to see at night as well as we do in the day, so empedocles postulated an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun. 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". 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