Idle Diffractions

An important event to be announced at IODC: The Rolland-Thompson Collection of Antiquarian Books in Optics and Related Sciences

The International Optics Design Conference
collocated with
The Conference on Optical Fabrication and Testing

June 10 – 14th, 2010
Jackson, Wyoming

Book cover design for selections from the Rolland-Thompson Collection of Antiquarian Books in Early Optics and the Related Sciences

It is almost upon us: the International Optical Design Conference (IODC), which I feel provides us a snapshot, every four years, of the state of “our” industry—optical design.  The modern revival of IODC began in either 1980 at Mills College, in the Bay area, or, as some may say (mostly those that were there) at a precursor conference in 1975 at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.  Since I entered the field in 1976, I missed the Haverford conference, although the founder of Optical Research Associates (ORA), Tom Harris, was there; I will share his insights on that event in a later posting. In 1998, I was the IODC co-chair with Leo Gardner, when the conference was located in Kona, HI.  The preconference site visit made for a particularly good “assignment” that year. 

Beyond a full contingent of papers, of which I and my wife, Prof. Jannick Rolland of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, are authors and/or coauthors of quite a few this time around, there are a couple of exciting events that I have been coordinating, with important and significant backing from ORA.  First, at IODC we will announce the Rolland-Thompson website for antiquarian books in optics, a project in cooperation with KirtasBooks (provider of book digitization and print-on-demand services) and ORA.  The mission of the site is to make printed copies available of rare and out-of-print optics and other science books, at a reasonable price.

As I described in an earlier posting, there was a period of some 10-15 years in the pre-Internet days when I was acquiring very to extremely old books in optics and optical design, one volume at a time, while I traveled throughout the US and England.  At the time, I was looking for Coddington’s original work, published in 1828.  Early on, I discovered that optics books that were very important to the fields of optical design and physics—such as Airy’s Undulatory Theory of Light (1848)--were languishing on crowded and dust-covered shelves in bookshops well off the beaten path, often at extremely reasonable prices.  My copy of Airy was purchased in the desert outside of Phoenix, in a bookshop of unpainted cement block, one door, and one window that was 99% filled with tattered paperback books. There at the back of the store was a single, three-foot shelf of hardcover books.  Imagine my surprise at finding on that shelf the only copy of Airy I have ever seen on the market. As I brought the copy to bookshop owner, he remarked that I was buying “the only book that brings any sense of respectability to this establishment.” He then rang up the charge of $8.50.  It is worth noting that although I did collect over 500 books in optics, physics, and astronomy written before 1930, I nearly never, in 15 years, saw a book twice, and I rarely found more than five books in any one place.

Returning to IODC: if you come early to visit ORA Engineering’s booth, we will have a complimentary copy of Airy’s book available for you to take away. Although some rare optics books are available online through Google scholar, having a printed copy on the shelf is, for some of us, still very attractive. At IODC, we will describe the process for ordering from a current list of over 125 volumes, dominantly in optical design. The current criterion is simply that the book is in the collection and it has an expired copyright, which means earlier than 1921, with some titles reaching back to the 1700s including works by Descartes and Euler.  The pricing system is very attractive, and any and all revenue will be used exclusively to expand the collection. A majority of the original books are now found on the first floor of the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona, which generously agreed to house them when they outgrew the space at my home.  Now, through links that will be posted at Optical Research Associates, the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences, the University of Rochester Institute of Optics, and KirtasBooks, in Victor, New York, the volumes will be accessible in a number of formats including electronic download, for a nominal fee of a few dollars, a print-on-demand soft-cover at an average price of about $15 (nothing over $25, I believe, with the potential exception of Robert Smith’s Optick’s, which may be the first book on optical design in (olde) English, 1728, and over 800 pages with many fold out prints, being processed at Kirtas this week and certainly one of the few truly expensive books in the collection), and even a print-on-demand hardcover with a somewhat higher (but still extremely reasonable) price structure. 

Looking forward, I will be reading a number of the books for the first time myself and writing up interesting discoveries. Also, shortly, the list of the books is expected in a condensed format to publish here, along with the web link.

Wachendorf?

So, I am doing a little research on the history of aspherics.  I learned one thing.  The earliest written reference I found so far is a US patent by Abbe, US 697,959, filed in 1899.  Along the way, I came on the name of Fritz Wachendorf.  A new name for me, and interesting unto itself, but, even more interesting for the following, unrelated Google search experience.

Let’s say you are interested in finding out the most significant books specifically oriented to optical design.  Here is what to do:

1. Go to www.scholar.google
2. Type “F. Wachendorf” with the quotation marks

At least at the moment, where I am, the second item should look like:

[CITATION] Bestimmung der Bildfehler 5. Ordnung in zentrierten optischen …
F Wachendorf - Optik, 1949
Cited by 7 - Related articles

Now, click on Related articles and you should see, near the top,

[CITATION] Geometrical Optics
JG Baker - Fundamental formulas of physics, 1955 - Prentice-Hall
Related articles - All 2 versions

Now, click on Related articles again, and you now have pretty much the top 100 books in geometrical optics. 

I recognize the list, because I spent over 10 years, in the pre-Internet period, collecting old books in optics and this list parallels what was my collection.  That collection has since been donated to the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona.  However, in a few months, the optics books in that collection that are dated before 1923 will be posted to the ORA website as they were recently scanned by Kirtas books using funding from ORA.  This will begin an exciting opportunity to get your own e-book, soft-cover, or, even hardcover version of the classics in optics, including, for example Coddington, from 1828 and Airy from 1850. There will be more on this, soon.  Try out the search series – the book list is really great.  And, there are a few articles that are interesting if you have missed them.  The one below for example. 

[CITATION] WHO? DISCOVERED CODDINGTON'S Equations?
R Kingslake - Optics and Photonics News, 1994 - opticsinfobase.org
In these formulae, s and t represent the distances from the point of incidence of the traced ray
to the sagittal and tangential object or image, measured along the traced principal ray, and r
is the radius of curvature of the refracting surface.

And, there appears to be a new book on photographic lenses out (don’t buy them all, I’m ordering mine tomorrow).  Looks good, especially if you happen to read German.

 

What We’ve All Been Waiting For!

 
This is probably the most important development in making the true, raw, history of science as we know it accessible to those of us who pursue it as a hobby.  The Proceedings of THE Royal Society are coming on-line, and they are even free, so far.  I can’t think of a more significant event.  This is the evolution of science and scientific thinking.  When I was in Scotland at the Royal Observatory, it was the first time I was in a room with the full collection, and it was all I could do to not call in sick, for a month and stay and read.  And, now, here it is, on-line for reading in front of my own fireplace.  Visit:

http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/

This website provides a collection of the curator’s 350 most important articles, integrated with a nice timeline and other graphics, it makes browsing the best of series painless and encourages you to venture into fields you wouldn’t otherwise take the time to research. 

This was announced earlier this last week and caught by Frank Moreno, ORA staff member, who is always on the lookout for things interesting.  The announcement is made at, among other places I expect, a BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8385560.stm

Speaking of reading, and on-line, I’m finally in the market for an e-reader.  The candidates appear to currently be the Sony e-book, the Amazon Kindle, and the soon to be Barnes and Noble Nook.  Of these, only the Sony appears to be configured for open access.  Does anyone out there have any experiences I should know about before making my holiday purchase?

The Arizona optics book collection, over 100 volumes of original optics books published pre-1920 are now at the book scanners, (KIRTAS in Victor, NY) and will soon be coming on-line on the Optical Research Associates website, courtesy of ORA and the University of Arizona.  These are books I collected in the ‘90s, while on a mission to find a copy of Coddington (and will include Coddington’s book).  Most of them, I never read, in detail, and some, like Dennis Taylor’s 1908 book on optical design, are true classics of the field.  Hence, the need for an e-book reader.  For those with an e-book reader, these books will be available, electronically, for download for, I believe, $2, (note the lack of zeros in that number).  For those not ready to go electronically, a hard copy of your very own (in softcover) will be printed on-demand for $20, and a nicely bound hard cover, with gold ink label even (I think), for $50. 

This new marketplace is going to make reading fun again.  More as it comes to be.

New Evidence on the Dates of the Oldest Telescopes

Over the weekend I received several books on the history of telescopes from a number of sources, including my ”favourite” source -- the Royal Society.  The books included Charles King’s excellent “History of the Telescope” from 1955 ($75).  If anyone is interested in a copy, there was a second copy available, although it may well be gone by now.   This small collection will form the basis for my current project, creating a list of the observatories of the world -- with two goals.  First, to find how many have primary mirrors that are over about 30" in diameter and are constructed before 1970-1980 (and therefore are likely to suffer from binodal astigmatism).  The second goal is to determine if the database contains enough information to create an optical model of at least the main telescope.  Three of the books have lists of observatories that seem significant.  The list will be posted here when I get to it (holding your breath is not recommended).

On a slightly more informative topic at the moment; this morning's e-mail brought a message from ORA employee Mark Kahan, who mentioned he was having trouble sleeping and found his way to a website on the history of astrophysics.  There he found a recently posted discussion of a painting from 1607 by Jan Brueghel that appears to show a Keplerian telescope some 5 years before it is reported in the literature by Kepler.  This is going to make going to the museum so much more interesting.  It didn’t occur to me to look for optics in the paintings.  The link, which is a quick read and shows the painting could be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.2696v1 and I highly recommend reading it.

Speaking of Old Books: The Crawford Library at the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh

Last week I attended the UK Optical Design Meeting, where I was invited to speak on the applications of my favorite topic, nodal aberration theory.  The meeting was held at the Edinburgh Royal Observatory, a beautiful building with a tremendous view. 

Built in the late 1800s, the building defines the classic European observatory. 

At the end of a day of talks on TMA telescopes and advanced instruments for astronomers, we were treated to a short tour of the library.  Given my earlier writing, this was a very timely visit.  It turns out that the library at the observatory houses what’s arguably the best and most complete collection of books in astronomy and optics in the world.  Books I’ve heard of for decades, and felt I had no hope of ever seeing, were all there.  It really is quite overwhelming.  This library is particularly inspiring as it provides close to complete coverage of the works in optics and astronomy before 1750 or even 1850.  It is very encouraging to see an intact collection of this magnitude, and gives real hope to the idea of assembling a tremendous collection that forms a complete basis for maintaining a robust history of optics.

The next step for me is to contact the librarian, who has promised that I can get a listing of their collection of 15,000 items.  I will also be discussing what it might take to spend a week at the library and whether I can full access to the collection, which appears to include Royal Society proceedings.  Obviously, more to come.

In the interim, I spotted the following reference, while scanning the shelves in the library:

A. Mark Smith in Transact. Amer. Philos. Soc., Vol. 96, Pts. 2, 3, 4, "Alhacen on the Principles of Reflection"

where Alhacen is more commonly seen as Alhazen.  This is often discussed as one of the earliest writings on light and optics.  The above reference is an English translation with commentary.  This has always been of high interest to me, making this a very exciting lead.

This thread leads one to the American Physical Society, www.aps.org, and trouble.  I managed to crawl away from the site with 11 new books on the history of optics:

Code	Name	Price	Qty	Total
0871697734	Descartes's Theory of Light & Refraction: A Discourse on Method	$20.00	1	$20.00
0871697521	Optical Corrections in the Sculpture of Donatello	$18.00	1	$18.00
0871699141	Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception (2 vol.)	$50.00	1	$50.00
0871692597	Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (Memoir 259)	$85.00	1	$85.00
0871699532	Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest: Lens Making Machines & Their Significance in the Seventeenth Century (Transaction 95-3)	$24.00	1	$24.00
0871692384	Command of Light: Rowland’s School of Physics & the Spectrum	$30.00	1	$30.00
0871699621	Alhacen on the Principles of Reflection: Volume 1: Introduction and Latin Text; Volume 2: English Translation (Transactions 96 No. 2 & 3)	$50.00	1	$50.00
0871691833	Lines of Nazca (Memoir 183)	$30.00	1	$30.00
0871699657	Essays and Reviews in History and History of Science (Transaction 96-5)	$24.00	1	$24.00
1606189859	Long Route to the Invention of the Telescope: (Transactions 98-5)	$35.00	1	$35.00
0871696746	Invention of the Telescope (2008 Reprint) (Transactions 67 No. 4)	$30.00	1	$30.00

including the Alhacen discussed above.  I will report on the content of what I received when I return to New York early in October.  I encourage you to check out the APS site – it is very nice, obscure, and relevant.

On Efforts to Preserve Rare Optics Books, Part 2

In 2000, a majority of the books that I collected between 1985 and 1995 were donated to the College of Optics at the University of Arizona, other than the most significant, e.g., Smiths, Optiks, from 1728 and the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, edited by David Brewster, that was published in the 1820s. These collected volumes were placed in nice, locked glasses cases on the first floor (which is actually a basement four stories underground), where, they are languishing in spite of best intentions.

I wrote an article on the more rare books that was published in OSA’s Optics and Photonics News in October 2005. The cover photo is actually some of my favorite objects from the past.  Besides the books there is an Edison lamp, I found in Maine, with an antique glass lampshade that a friend of mine who collects (nice choice for a hobby) gave me for my birthday, all placed on an authentic Stickley library table that I got from Skinner auctions, from Bolton, MA, from the days when I lived in Harvard, MA.  For those in that area of the country, www.skinner.com has one of the few remaining auctions specifically on scientific instruments – extremely dangerous.

Image from my article for Optics and Photonics News,
“Early Books in Optics and Optical Design” (Vol. 16, Issue 10, pp. 28-33)

So, there is a new project underway, funded by my employer Optical Research Associates and with the support of the Dean of the College of Optical Sciences, Dr. Wyant, and the faculty, particularly Prof. Greivenkamp and Sasian, to scan the optics volumes (as a starting point) and post them to the rare books web site at www.opticalres.com, the rare book library at the University of Rochester, and a Web site to be determined at the University of Arizona.

The physical scanning is to be done by a company named Kitara, in Victor, New York, who I hear is the world leader in this technology (if anyone has other experiences, let me know before it’s too late) and the character recognition is being provided by the staff at the University of Rochester rare books library. 

As many reading this would know, and others need to know, Google has created a Beta Web site where they are providing access to a phenomenal and growing collection of scientific books, particularly pre-1910 (to avoid copyright issues).  The staff at ORA has gone through a list of the 237 most significant books and learned that less than 20% are currently available at www.scholar.google.com .  Eventually, one would hope that most of these books would appear there, but, even then, having the optics collection localized, at least seems very useful, and hence the upcoming project.

The goal is to post the scanned books at the Web sites before or at the 2010 International Optics Design Conference (IODC).  The conference will be held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in June of 2010.

How Coddington Changed My Life

In 1985, I had a single goal: to purchase a copy of Coddington’s 1829 book on optics, for reasons I will save for later.  This process actually took me 10 years.  And, of course, the month I found one Coddington, I came independently on to three copies; I bought them all.

In this period, I acquired over 500 volumes in optics, astronomy, and physics, predominantly, pre-1930.  Over time, I will highlight some of these and soon I will build a link to the list of books.

My diversion was initially created from a trip to Yale University, where the librarian at Perkin-Elmer Corp. had found there was a copy.  This was the early 1980s, and for mere money ($30/mo. as I recall) you were allowed to enter the stacks and wander anywhere.  This changed my life.  Coddington was there on the shelf, surrounded by literally hundreds of volumes on optics, most from the 1800s.  Here, for example, is where I saw the Edinburgh encyclopedia for the first time (and I expected the last).  The Edinburgh encyclopedia is particularly interesting because in 1820, there were very few encyclopedias.  This particular encyclopedia was written on a subscription basis and edited by David Brewster.  David Brewster is famous for a number of things, including Brewster’s angle in polarization and arguably the invention of the kaleidoscope (at least in his mind, although he never got any money for it).  The topics of the encyclopedia were relatively random as the structure of encyclopedias had yet to be standardized.  One clue to this is that there are 18 (large, 1,000 page) volumes.  Fifteen of these cover the first half of the alphabet, A-M, and three volumes cover O (including optics) through Z.  More on this fascinating collection another time.  Once in, I spent three days in the stacks, and formulated my plan to assemble a similar collection in a more accessible location.

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.