Development of knowledge in the field of optics

Development of knowledge in the field of optics

Adapted from Niel Brandt's Timelines Version 3.0 1994, as it appears on LEARN. Copyright Niel Brandt 1994.

From prehistoric times to the tenth century

From the eleventh to the sixteenth century

The seventeenth century

The eighteenth century

The nineteenth century

First half of the twentieth century

Second half of the twentieth century

From prehistoric times to the tenth century

-3000	Candles are invented
-2136	Chinese astronomers record a solar eclipse.
-586	Thales of Miletus predicts a solar eclipse.
-270	Ctesibius builds a popular water clock.
-350	Aristotle argues for a spherical Earth using lunar eclipses and other observations.
-350	Aristotle discusses logical reasoning in Organon
-300	Euclid studies geometry as an axiomatic system in Elements and states the law of reflection in Catoptrics
-280	Aristarchus uses the size of the Earth's shadow on the Moon to estimate that the Moon's radius is one-third of that of the earth.
-200	Apollonius writes On Conic Sections and names the ellipse, parabola and hyperbola.
-200	Eratosthenes uses shadows to determine that the radius of the Earth is roughly 6400 km.
-150	Hipparchus uses parallax to determine that the distance to the Moon is roughly 380 000 km.
-150	Hipparchus invents the astrolabe.
-134	Hipparchus creates the magnitude scale of stellar apparent luminosities.
-134	Hipparchus discovers the precession of the equinoxes.
-134	Hipparchus makes a detailed star map
-46	Julius Caesar and Sosigenes develop a solar calendar with leap years.
60	Heron of Alexandria writes Metrica, Mechanica and The pneumatica.
130	Claudius Ptolemaeus tabulates angles of refraction for several media.

First half of the twentieth century

1900

Max Planck states his quantum hypothesis and blackbody radiation law.

1900

Johannes Rydberg refines the expression for observed hydrogen line wavelengths.

1901

Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland.

1902

Philipp Lenard observes that maximum photoelectron energies are independent of illuminating intensity but depend on frequency.

1905

Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effect.

1906

Karl Schwarzschild explains solar limb darkening.

1906

Charles Barkla discovers that each element has a characteristic X-ray and that the degree of penetration of these X-rays is related to the atomic mass of the element.

1907

Albert Einstein introduces the principle of equivalence of gravitation and inertia and uses it to predict the gravitational redshift

1908

Hans Geiger and Ernest Rutherford invent the Geiger counter.

1912

Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping diffract X-rays in zinc blende.

1912

Victor Hess discovers that the ionization of air increases with altitude indicating the existence of cosmic radiation.

1913

Niels Bohr presents his quantum model of the atom.

1914

James Franck and Gustav Hertz observe atomic excitation.

1917

Albert Einstein introduces the idea of stimulated radiation emission.

1919

Arthur Eddington leads a solar eclipse expedition which claims to detect gravitational deflection of light by the Sun.

1922

Arthur Compton studies X-ray photon scattering by electrons.

1923

Louis de Broglie suggests that electrons may have wavelike properties.

1924

Wolfgang Pauli states the quantum exclusion principle.

1924

Arthur Eddington develops the main-sequence mass-luminosity relationship.

1925

John Baird transmits the first television signal.

1928

Paul Dirac states his relativistic electron quantum wave equation.

1928

Chandrasekhara Raman studies optical photon scattering by electrons.

1929

Edwin Hubble demonstrates the linear redshift-distance relation and thus shows the expansion of the universe.

1929

George Gamow proposes hydrogen fusion as the energy source for stars.

1930

Karl Jansky builds a 30-meter long rotating aerial radio telescope.

1932

Karl Jansky discovers radio noise from the center of the Milky Way.

1932

Ernst Ruska builds the first electron microscope.

1933

Max Delbrück suggests that quantum effects will cause photons to be scattered by an external electric field.

1935

Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen put forth the 'EPR' paradox.

1935

Robert Watson-Watt devises a microwave radar.

1937

Seth Neddermeyer, Carl Anderson, J.C. Street, and E.C. Stevenson discover muons using cloud chamber measurements of cosmic rays.

1937

Grote Reber builds a 9.45 metre radio telescope.

1942

J.S. Hey detects solar radio waves.

1946

Herbert Friedman and his team launch the first astronomical instrument (a solar ultraviolet spectrograph) above the Earth's atmosphere on a captured German V-2 rocket.

1947

Bernard Lovell and his group complete the Jodrell Bank 66 metre non-steerable radio telescope.

1948

George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Herman predict that a Big Bang universe will have a blackbody cosmic microwave background with temperature about 5 K.

1949

Herbert Friedman detects solar X-rays.

1949

A 122 cm Schmidt optical reflecting telescope and a 5.08 metre optical reflecting telescope begin operation in Palomar, California.

Second half of the twentieth century

1952

Rosalind Franklin uses X-ray diffraction to study the structure of DNA and suggests that its sugar-phosphate backbone is on its outside.

1953

James Watson and Francis Crick propose a double helix structure for DNA.

1953

Max Perutz and John Kendrew determine the structure of hemoglobin using X-ray diffraction studies.

1953

Charles Townes makes the first maser.

1955

Tigran Shmaonov finds excess microwave emission with a temperature of roughly 3 K.

1956

Herbert Friedman detects evidence for extrasolar X-rays.

1960

Theodore Maiman makes the first laser.

1965

Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson, Bernie Burke, Robert Dicke, and James Peebles discover the cosmic microwave background radiation.

1966

Charles Kao realizes that silica-based waveguides offer a practical way to transmit light via total internal reflection.

1971

Stephen Hawking points out that primordial black holes might have been created in the Big Bang.

1973

Akira Hasegawa and Fred Tappert propose the use of solitary waves to carry information in optical fibers.

1976

A.I. Shlyakhter uses samarium ratios from the prehistoric natural fission reactor in Gabon to show that some laws of physics have remained unchanged for over 2 billion years.

1976

Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken use a computer to solve the four-colour problem.

1977

James Elliot discovers the rings of Uranus during a stellar occultation experiment on the Kuiper Airborne Observatory.

1979

Canada-France-Hawaii 355 cm optical reflecting telescope begins operation in Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

1980

Linn Mollenauer, Rogers Stollen, and James Gordon demonstrate that solitary waves can be propagated through optical fibers.

1989

Voyager 2 sends back images of Neptune and its system.

1990

Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

1991

Anders Olsson transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion bits per second.

1993

Keck 10-meter optical/infrared reflecting telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii,begins operation.

1054	Chinese and Amerindian astronomers observe the Crab supernova explosion.
1249	Roger Bacon writes about convex lenses for treating of farsightedness (myopia).
1305	Dietrich von Freiberg uses crystalline spheres and flasks filled with water to study the reflection and refraction in raindrops that leads to primary and secondary rainbows.
1451	Nicolas de Cusa invents concave lens spectacles to treat nearsightedness (presbyopia).
1480	Martin Behaim introduces the nautical astrolabe.
1512	Nicholas Copernicus first states his heliocentric theory in Commentariolus.
1543	Nicholas Copernicus shows that his heliocentric theory simplifies planetary motion tables in De Revolutionibus de Orbium Coelestium.
1572	Tycho Brahe discovers his supernova in Cassiopeia.
1576	Thomas Digges modifies the Copernican system by removing its outer edge and replacing the edge with a star filled unbounded space.
1577	Tycho Brahe uses parallax to prove that comets are distant entities and not atmospheric phenomena.
1582	Pope Gregory XIII, Aloysius Lilius, and Christopher Clavius introduce a Gregorian calendar with an improved leap year system.
1590	Zacharias Janssen invents the microscope.
1596	David Fabricus notices that Mira's brightness varies.

1604	Johannes Kepler describes how the eye focuses light.
1604	Johannes Kepler's supernova in Serpens is observed.
1608	Hans Lippershey tries to patent an optical refracting telescope.
1609	Galileo Galilei builds his first optical refracting telescope.
1610	Galileo Galilei discovers Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io.
1610	Galileo Galilei sees Saturn's rings but does not recognize that they are rings.
1611	Johannes Kepler discovers total internal reflection, a small angle law of refraction and thin lens optics.
1611	Marko Dominis discusses the rainbow in De Radiis Visus et Lucis.
1613	Galileo Galilei uses sunspot observations to demonstrate the rotation of the Sun.
1619	Johannes Kepler postulates a solar wind to explain the direction of comet tails.
1619	René Descartes discovers analytical geometry.
1620	Francis Bacon analyzes the scientific method in his Great Instauration of Learning.
1621	Willebrord Snell states his law of refraction.
1637	René Descartes quantitatively derives the angles at which primary and secondary rainbows are seen with respect to the angle of the Sun's elevation.
1638	Galileo Galilei publishes Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences.
1641	William Gascoigne invents telescope cross hairs.
1656	Christian Huygens identifies Saturn's rings as rings and discovers Titan and the Orion Nebula.
1656	Christian Huygens builds the first accurate pendulum clock.
1657	Pierre de Fermat introduces the principle of least time into optics.
1661	James Gregory proposes an optical reflecting telescope.
1663	Robert Hooke sees cells in cork using a microscope.
1668	Isaac Newton constructs the first optical reflecting telescope.
1672	Jean Richer and Giovanni Cassini measure the astronomical unit to be about 138 370 000 km.
1674	Anton van Leeuwenhoek invents the compound microscope.
1675	Ole Römer uses the orbital mechanics of Jupiter's moons to estimate that the speed of light is about 227 000 km/s.
1676	Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes protozoa with his microscope and calls them `animalcules'.
1678	Christian Huygens states his principle of wavefront sources.
1683	Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria.

1704	Isaac Newton publishes Opticks.
1705	Edmund Halley publicly predicts the periodicity of Halley's comet and computes its expected path of return in 1758.
1715	Edmund Halley calculates the shadow path of a solar eclipse.
1716	Edmund Halley suggests a high-precision measurement of the Sun-Earth distance by timing the transit of Venus.
1716	Edmund Halley suggests that aurorae (Northern Lights) are caused by 'magnetic effluvia' moving along the Earth's magnetic field lines.
1731	John Hadley invents the sextant.
1733	Chester Moor Hall invents the achromatic lens refracting telescope.
1737	John Harrison presents the first stable nautical chronometer, thereby allowing for precise longitude determination while at sea.
1752	Benjamin Franklin shows that lightning is electricity.
1758	John Dolland reinvents the achromatic lens.
1758	Johann Palitzsch observes the return of Halley's comet.
1781	William Herschel discovers Uranus during a telescopic survey of the northern sky.
1785	Charles Coulomb introduces the inverse-square law of electrostatics.
1789	William Herschel finishes a 124 cm optical reflecting telescope in located in Slough, England.
1798	Count Rumford introduces the idea that heat is a form of energy.

1800	William Herschel discovers infrared radiation from the Sun.
1801	Johann Ritter discovers ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
1801	Thomas Young demonstrates the wave nature of light and the principle of interference.
1802	William Wollaston observes dark lines in the solar spectrum.
1808	Etienne Malus discovers polarization by reflection.
1809	Etienne Malus publishes the law of Malus which predicts the light intensity transmitted by two polarizing sheets.
1816	David Brewster discovers stress birefringence.
1818	Simon Poisson predicts the Poisson bright spot at the center of the shadow of a circular opaque obstacle.
1818	François Arago verifies the existence of the Poisson bright spot.
1825	Augustin Fresnel phenomenologically explains optical activity by introducing circular birefringence.
1826	Joseph Niepce takes the first permanent photograph.
1834	Hermann Helmholtz proposes gravitational contraction as the energy source for the Sun.
1838	Thomas Henderson, Friedrich Struve, and Friedrich Bessel measure stellar parallaxes.
1840	J.W. Draper invents astronomical photography and photographs the Moon.
1843	Heinrich Schwabe announces his discovery of the sunspot cycle and estimates its period to be about 10 years.
1845	Lord Rosse finishes the Birr Castle 183 cm optical reflecting telescope, located in Parsonstown, Ireland.
1845	Michael Faraday discovers that light propagation in a material can be influenced by external magnetic fields.
1845	Urbain Leverrier observes a 35'' per century excess precession of Mercury's orbit.
1849	Armand Fizeau and Jean-Bernard Foucault measure the speed of light to be about 298 000 km/s.
1851	Jean-Bernard Foucault shows the Earth's rotation with a huge pendulum.
1852	George Stokes defines the Stokes parameters of polarization.
1859	Richard Carrington discovers solar flares.
1859	Richard Carrington suspects a physical connection between a major solar flare and enhanced magnetic activity on the Earth some hours thereafter.
1860	Gustav Kirchoff and Robert Bunsen discover that each element has its own distinct set of spectral lines and use this fact to explain the solar dark lines.
1861	F.G.W. Sporer discovers the variation of sunspot latitudes during a solar cycle.
1864	William Huggins studies the spectrum of the Orion Nebula and shows that it is a cloud of gas.
1864	John Herschel publishes the General Catalog of nebulae and star clusters.
1864	Antoine Becquerel suggests an optical pyrometer.
1864	James Clerk Maxwell publishes his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field.
1868	Pierre-Jules-César Janssen et Norman Lockyer discover an unidentified yellow line in solar prominence spectra and suggest it comes from a new element which they name 'helium'.
1871	Lord Rayleigh discusses the blue sky and sunsets.
1872	Henry Draper invents astronomical spectral photography and photographs the spectrum of Vega.
1873	James Clerk Maxwell states that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon.
1875	John Kerr discovers the electrically induced birefringence of some liquids.
1879	Thomas Edison patents the carbon-thread incandescent lamp.
1879	Josef Stefan observes that the total radiant flux from a blackbody is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature.
1885	Johann Balmer finds a mathematical expression for observed hydrogen line wavelengths.
1887	Albert Michelson and Edward Morley do not detect the ether drift.
1887	Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect.
1888	Heinrich Hertz discovers radio waves.
1890	Albert Michelson proposes the stellar interferometer
1891	Thomas Edison patents the 'kinetoscopic camera'.
1892	George Hale finishes a spectroheliograph which allowed the Sun to be photographed in the light of one element only
1892	Henri-Louis Le Châtelier builds the first optical pyrometer.
1893	Wilhelm Wien discovers the displacement law for a blackbody's maximum specific intensity.
1894	Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay discover argon by spectroscopically analyzing the gas left over after nitrogen and oxygen are removed from air.
1895	Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays.
1895	William Ramsay discovers terrestrial helium by spectroscopically analyzing gas produced by decaying uranium.