Optics Gallery
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One of the most interesting aspects of glass is how it reacts with light.
From the first telescope to the latest in optical fiber communication, the story of optics is the story of how we manipulate light. In the Optics Gallery, meet the innovators who opened the universe, who made travel safer, who let us speed along the Information Highway—with glass.
The famous 200-inch disk, the first casting for the Hale telescope on Mount Palomar, is the centerpiece of the gallery. Its new mounting allows you to see it from all angles. The feeling of "being there" that you'd get in the prime focus of the telescope is the same as the startling virtual view you get from a flight simulator mirror that greets you at the gallery entrance.
Compare refracting telescopes with reflecting telescopes. Check the view through a periscope. Aim a laser through a stream of water to test total internal reflection.
Telescope
Lenses are used in refracting telescopes and mirrors are used in reflecting telescopes. The mirrors are ground and polished so that a precise concave surface remains to be coated with a shiny, reflective finish. Mirrors concentrate light and focus all colors of the spectrum in an image. No lens can...
Articles
I contrived heretofore, a perspective by Reflexion. —Sir Isaac Newton, c. 1668 The refracting telescope gave...
They make glass. By day and night, the fires burn on … and bid the sand let in the light. -Carl Sandburg, In Reckless...
I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing! -Alexander Graham Bell It was a bright idea: use sunlight to...
The world began to realize that so far it had only toyed with glass. Now a brand new material was born. -Walter Kioulehn,...
Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862 A glass lens. It’s nothing more than a...
It was an idea that might have remained buried in scientific journals. Instead, it led to a device that gave modern telecommunications a much-needed...
After you see something work, then you realize that it’s not so complicated after all. – J. Franklin Hyde It’s...
The most dangerous part of a sailing trip used to be returning to shore. Lighthouses were built to signal the safest route, but often the weak light...
Glass rods could transmit light, but could they transmit an image? A professor at a French agricultural college found himself faced with that...