On Efforts to Preserve Rare Optics Books, Part 1

One of my primary optics interests is based around a period of intensive (at least by my standards) book collecting that occurred for me in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  During that period, which is notably pre-Internet, I developed a specific set of interests that I would like to now bring forward with a motivation to engage those who have knowledge of and access to related material.  The specific optics topics I will be writing on are likely to be

• geometrical optics and optical design between 1885 and 1980
• optics before 1885

I have the same motivation now as I had in 1985.  The history of optics and particularly optical design is scattered about the country, and for that matter the world.  It is essential that we take a moment to collect this material up and place it in a common location, to the extent we can.  Or, at least try to build and maintain a location that attempts to keep and catalog links to the past 125 years of this aspect of science.

Comments

[Eric Larkin]

It's truly important to gather these books together, especially so in the face of several entropic forces:

(1) Many of these books are out of print.

(2) There is an overall migration of data and focus to an Internet-based medium for knowledge compilation and dissemination, and away from the printed page.

(3) The number of practitioners of optical science/engineering/design is a small number (and possibly growing smaller due to globalization and historical trends).

(4) At the end of our lives, our private or office libraries will either be passed along to our work colleagues, or they will be liquidated by the executors of our estates. Neither parties may appreciate the significance of older textbooks, or be motivated to find a good and useful "home" for them.

So Kevin, having tossed out this idea of compilation and preservation of optical textbooks and knowledge, what form of collection or compilation do you see as being viable and sustainable for this relatively specialized (yet diffused) trove of knowledge?

- Would ORA have any interest or cubic footage available to support such an undertaking?

- Are universities (U of R, U of A) a suitably stable place, with both an interest in the subject matter and a suitably long time horizon?

- Is some kind of non-profit organization the right entity to gather and care for this?

Good question, lots of potential answers, and, as always, limited resources (time, money, people). I look forward your own and other comments.

[Kevin Thompson]

Eric, To continue your comments on archiving optics, here’s what I’m thinking and what is in-process. (I’ve been off on vacation, hence the delay in responding). The area I’m focusing on is optics before 1930 and how best to locate everything that is relevant to geometrical optics and optical design (predominantly) and then how to make what has been located accessible. On the one hand, there is the Google Scholar site. (For those who missed this, if you go to www.scholar.google you get access to a growing wealth of early (1800s in particular) material in all fields, including optics). For example, T. Smith, a prolific writer in the 1915-1925 timeframe is on-line at Google Scholar. Another example, the first article on the physics of liquid lenses, from the early 1800s, a 65 page paper by Thomas Young. However, a recent search against the 300 or so volumes I donated to the University of Arizona, College of Optical Sciences, turned up less than 1/3 are currently on Google Scholar (don’t get me wrong, this is great, but indicates other actions would have value).

I am in the process of initiating, based on a donation by Optical Research Associates, a project to scan as many of the books as I can for $10,000 in the collection donated to the University of Arizona combined with what remains of my personal collection. Key items include the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, (edited by David Brewster in the 1820’s – a topic for later), which is over 15,000 pages and the early papers on automated optical design by James G. Baker (classified until 1963, and more than extremely rare), which is over 5,000 pages. This scanned material is intended to form the pathfinding basis for addressing the problem you have raised. The material is to be cohosted by Optical Research Associates, The Rare Book Library at the University of Rochester, and the College of Optical Sciences in Tucson.

As an interface, the Rare Book Library at the University of Rochester will probably take the lead. As an example of what they are already doing, tryout

http://www.library.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=4503

which leads you to their collection of material from Prof. Kingslake.

Currently, I’m thinking, based on my experiences so far, that a system based on authors is the most accessible. To make this work it will be valuable to create a short set of biographies for authors of interest in this period. That currently seems like a tractable project, although it will probably take years rather than months. But, this could become a legacy site, so, I don’t see any hurry, yet.

Currently, the best link to the Optical Sciences library is through the following link,

http://www.optics.arizona.edu/library/default.htm

Currently, this leads to the Fred Hopf library (Prof. Hopf was a memorable Prof. during my tenure at the Center in the late 70s). A first step, to occur potentially this month, is to add a link on that page to the collection of volumes that I donated in 2000.

The collection that I donated in 2000 represents 10 years of collecting books on geometrical optics and optical design. I will write more on this collection – soon.

I am very interested in learning what others think of this plan. Over time it can become the central source for our field, including, interviews and other more live links. My goal is simply to not lose track of the important material from before 1930 and separately to get a robust collection of the material on the early work on optical design on large computers extending to about 1970. The goal is to create an open environment where anyone with an interest is encouraged to contribute any material they may have, and at least any leads they know of that are missing.

[Eric Larkin]

Hi Kevin,

Welcome back from vacation and thanks for the details on the status of the historical optics books and scanning efforts.

I am pleased to see organizational interest (ORA, U of A, and U of R) and some funding for this, so the effort appears to be sustainable and not totally dependent on interested individuals and their volunteerism, which can change or peter out over time.

Scanning the information is good and makes it accessible, thereby generating more interest and possibly more organization, financial, and individual support in a "virtuous cycle". I could see these being of technical and historical interest, attracting both scientists/engineers and historians of science.

However, the source documents themselves still need to be maintained and clearly identified, so that they don't go out to the paper mill in some future fit of "document retention", or suffer from poor storage conditions (flooding in a 4 story deep basement during Tucson's "monsoon" season is a possibility).

Great blog, enjoying it so far.

Best regards, Eric Larkin