EOTO: A Brief History of the Lens

        The history of the lens has a long and complicated history, and much of the early beginnings started even before the use of glass. This area of history is highly conversed as it goes back to a time where recorded history does not exist well, and is only pieced together by artifacts. One such example of artifacts was found in Egypt and traces back to the Old Kingdom around 2500 B.C.E. A statue was found that has eyes made of polished quarts in a convex, or rounded lens. This allowed someone walking around the stature to have it continually stare at the person. We also know of early beginnings in Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen) who lived from 945 to 1040 during the Islamic Golden Age. He is a renowned philosopher that is credited as one of the firsts to study the reflective properties of glass through the invention of the camera obscura. This was an invention that required a small lens that would be placed inside the wall of a building, box, or tent. The sun would shine through and project a reverse image of the outside on the opposite wall or sheet.

        The lens also went through some important changes through the centuries in the West, such as in Italy during the 13th Century. Some of the first glassmakers were in Italy, and they crafted convex lenses that were fashioned into simple glasses for reading. There were also monks that used quartz lenses as crude magnifying glasses for reading. Continuing further West in the 1780’s, the Founding Father Benjamin Franklin began to get annoyed that whenever he wanted to read his written works while also seeing far away, he had to switch pairs of glasses. His solution was the bifocals, lenses that had the bottom half of his glass for reading, while the top used a different glass to see farther away. This would allow him to become much more efficient in reading and writing the documents that founded the United States of America.

    The modernization and portability of lenses (through camera technology) began with Johann Heinrich Schulze. He studied the effect of the light sensitive chemicals, and in 1727, found out that a silver-salt reacted well. Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1827 made the first photograph in France by getting an engraved plate, adding chemicals (including asphalt), and had it react to light. This image was not permanent, and took 8 hours; not very practical. Louis Daguerre then worked with Niepce in 1829, and 10 years later, he made the daguerreotype photograph. This used mercury, silver, and iodine that produced the first permanent photo. In the early 1900’s, George Eastman popularized the use of film roll by creating the “Brownie”. The “Brownie” camera would let the photographer take their photos, send them to the company, and the company would process them. Edwin Herbert Lane created the first instant photography by using polarized lenses, a process that used light sensitive lenses to capture better photos. He released the first Polaroid camera in 1948.