Ruling engines and diffraction gratings before Rowland: the work of Lewis Rutherfurd and William Rogers.

Diffraction gratings are famously associated with Henry Rowland of Johns Hopkins University but there were precursors. Although gratings were first made and used in Europe, reliable machines for ruling gratings were developed in the USA, and two men, Lewis Rutherfurd and William Rogers, tackled the problem before Rowland. Rutherfurd, a wealthy independent astronomer, designed and built the first screw-operated engine for ruling diffraction gratings, the fore-runner of almost all subsequent ruling engines. With it he and his assistant D. C. Chapman ruled many gratings which he generously distributed to practising scientists, thereby materially advancing the science of spectroscopy. Rogers was a Harvard astronomer who developed an interest in the ruling of fine lines on glass that led him to construct a ruling engine with which he investigated the causes of the errors in the rulings he had examined. He continued to seek improvements with a second engine designed for ruling diffraction gratings. He ceased developing this engine when Rowland's excellent gratings began to be available, concentrating instead on related problems to which he could apply the knowledge and skills he had gained, but his investigations assisted Rowland and other later ruling engine builders. This paper brings together what is known about the ruling engines of Rutherfurd and Rogers, their development, the gratings they produced, their quality and the work that was done with them, and assesses and compares their achievements and the impacts of the work of these two men.

[Effects of physics on development of optometry in the United States from the late 19th to the mid 20th century].

In this paper, it was studied how physics affected development of optometry in the United States, from aspects of formation and academization of optometry. It was also revealed that history of optometry was analogous to history of engineering. Optics in the 19th century was divided into electromagnetic study of light and visual optics. Development of the visual optics promoted professionalization of ophthalmology that had already started in the 18th century. The visual optics also stimulated formation of optometry and optometrists body in the late 19th century of the United States. The American optometrists body were originated from opticians who had studied visual optics. Publication of several English academic textbooks on visual optics induced appearance of educated opticians (and jewelers). They acquired a right to do the eye examination in the early 20th century after C. F. Prentice's trial in 1897, evolving into optometrists. The opticians could be considered as craftsmen, and they were divided into (dispensing) opticians and optometrists. Such history of American optometrists body is analogous to that of engineers body in the viewpoints of craftsmen origin and separation from craftsmen. Engineers were also originated from educated craftsmen, but were separated from craftsmen when engineering was built up. Education system and academization of optometry was strongly influenced by physics, too. When college education of optometry started at American universities, it was not belonged to medical school but to physics department. Physics and optics were of great importance in curriculum, and early faculty members were mostly physicists. Optometry was academized in the 1920s by the college education, standardization of curriculum, and formation of the American Academy of Optometry. This is also analogous to history of engineering, which was academized by natural sciences, especially by mathematics and physics. The reason why optometry was academized not by medicine but by physics is because ophthalmologists did not have conciliatory attitudes to optometry education. Optometry became independent of physics from the 1930s to the 1940s. Optometric researches concentrated on binocular vision that is not included to discipline of physics, and faculty members who majored in optometry increased, so that optometry departments and graduate schools were established around 1940. Such independence from natural sciences after academization also resembles history of engineering. On the contrary, history of optometry was different from history of ophthalmology in several aspects. Ophthalmology had already been formed in the 18th century before development of visual optics, and was not academized by visual optics. Ophthalmologists body were not originated from craftsmen, and were not separated from craftsmen. History of optometry in the United States from the late 19th to the mid 20th century is analogous to history of engineering rather than history of medicine, though optometry is a medical discipline.

Introducing the Special Issue Honoring Lihong V. Wang, Pioneer in Biomedical Optics.

The editorial concludes the JBO Special Issue Honoring Lihong V. Wang, outlining Prof. Wang's salient contributions to advancing the field of biomedical optics.

Remembering Professor Mamoru Tamura.

Dr. Mamoru Tamura (1943-2011) was the honorary president of the ISOTT 2008 meeting in Sapporo, Japan, and has made numerous contributions to biomedical optics and functional near-infrared spectrometry. This chapter briefly describes Dr. Tamura's scientific achievements and contributions to the society based on the "Memorial lecture about Mamoru Tamura's contributions to biomedical optics" in ISOTT 2012 in Bruges, Belgium.

The transience of virtual fractals.

Artists have a long and fruitful tradition of exploiting electronic media to convert static images into dynamic images that evolve with time. Fractal patterns serve as an example: computers allow the observer to zoom in on virtual images and so experience the endless repetition of patterns in a matter that cannot be matched using static images. This year's featured cover artist, Susan Lowedermilk, instead plans to employ persistence of human vision to bring virtual fractals to life. This will be done by incorporating her prints of fractal patterns into zoetropes and phenakistoscopes.

Thomas Young's investigations in gradient-index optics.

PURPOSE: James Clerk Maxwell is usually recognized as being the first, in 1854, to consider using inhomogeneous media in optical systems. However, some 50 years earlier, Thomas Young, stimulated by his interest in the optics of the eye and accommodation, had already modeled some applications of gradient-index optics. These applications included using an axial gradient to provide spherical aberration-free optics and a spherical gradient to describe the optics of the atmosphere and the eye lens. We evaluated Young's contributions. METHODS: We attempted to derive Young's equations for axial and spherical refractive index gradients. Raytracing was used to confirm accuracy of formula. RESULTS: We did not confirm Young's equation for the axial gradient to provide aberration-free optics but derived a slightly different equation. We confirmed the correctness of his equations for deviation of rays in a spherical gradient index and for the focal length of a lens with a nucleus of fixed index surrounded by a cortex of reducing index toward the edge. Young claimed that the equation for focal length applied to a lens with part of the constant index nucleus of the sphere removed, such that the loss of focal length was a quarter of the thickness removed, but this is not strictly correct. CONCLUSIONS: Young's theoretical work in gradient-index optics received no acknowledgment from either his contemporaries or later authors. Although his model of the eye lens is not an accurate physiological description of the human lens, with the index reducing least quickly at the edge, it represented a bold attempt to approximate the characteristics of the lens. Thomas Young's work deserves wider recognition.

[Greatness and tribulations of two German optic companies - II. The Leitz company]. / Grandeur et vicissitudes de deux grandes Compagnies d'optique allemandes - II. La firme Leitz.

A parallel is drawn between the histories of the two most famous German optic companies. Born in the middle of the 19th century, Zeiss and Leitz went through National Socialism. But their histories are very different. Leitz Archive documents abound, especially from one of the main actors, Oskar Barnack (father of the Leica). Ernst Leitz II and his daughter Elsie tried to help the Jewish workers, their families and, later, the Ukrainian women working in the factory. Leitz succeeded to establish what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as «the Leica Freedom Train¼. Their tribulations throw light on the German adventure during the last century.

[Greatness and tribulations of Zeiss and Leitz, two famous German optic companies III. Zeiss Ikon and elimination of Emanuel Goldberg]. / Grandeur et vicissitudes de deux grandes compagnies d'optique allemandes III. Zeiss Ikon et l'élimination d'Emanuel Goldberg.

Gathering archival documents to trace the history of the Zeiss company presents no difficulty : they are abundant… except for a period from 1932 to 1945, systematically ignored, and that corresponds to the Nazi period. On the website Zeiss Historica, among the outstanding personalities of the Zeiss company, we note that, for Professor Emanuel Goldberg, the web page « is still under development but an early picture of the professor is available. ¼. But fortunately, Mickael Buckland, a Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information brought the life and the work of Emanuel Goldberg to light. Thanks to him, his works and innovations, who had disappeared from our cultural and scientific heritage, return to light after being erased during fifty years. Goldberg had published dozens of articles, obtained patents, developed cameras, microdots, movie cameras, and he designed what he called a "Statistical Machine ", the first electronic document retrieval machine. In France, if this rediscovery was made known to the world of information science, it has not had the impact it deserved in the scientific world. Therefore it is time to reconstruct his career and his work, and to analyse the reasons why some attempted to erase definitively his name and memory.

Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723): father of micromorphology and discoverer of spermatozoa.

The Dutch merchant and naturalist Anton van Leeuwenhoek is considered to be the father of optic microscopy and the precursor of bacteriology. Among others, he discovered and studied the spermatozoon.

A History of Flexible Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.

Surgeons have been involved, since the beginning, in the development and evolution of endoscopy. They have been instrumental in developing new methods and have been actively involved in most of the therapeutic applications. The continued evolution of endoscopic technique is inevitable and will involve the integration of new technology with innovative thinking.

The Sämisch case and the Müllers of Wiesbaden.

PURPOSE: There are significant inconsistencies in accounts in textbooks of the fitting in 1887 of a device resembling a scleral contact lens. The aim of this study was to establish the facts of this case and to provide an overview of the subsequent clinical performance of blown scleral shells and lenses. METHODS: A literature search was conducted that included the original report published in 1910 of the fitting of the patient. The dimensions and back vertex power of a blown scleral shell were measured. RESULTS: In 1887, the right eye of a patient with lagophthalmic keratitis as a sequel to cancerous destruction of the lower eyelid was fitted with a protective blown scleral shell. His left eye was effectively blind. The referring ophthalmologist was Professor Theodor Sämisch of Bonn and the fitting was undertaken by the firm of F Ad Müller & Söhne of Wiesbaden, Germany. With periodical replacement, a shell was worn for at least 21 years. Müller scleral shells were principally fitted in keratoconus providing markedly improved visual acuities and wearing times of up to 14 h a day. There were instances of continuous wear. CONCLUSIONS: Failure to consult original sources is responsible for errors in descriptions of the Sämisch case that is of historical importance because it represents both the first use of a therapeutic contact shell and the first instance of continuous wear. Blown scleral shells and lenses played an important part in the optical correction of keratoconus and the management of other ocular conditions during the first quarter of the 20th century.

Physiological optics, cognition and emotion: a novel look at the early work of Wilhelm Wundt.

The German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt, who later founded experimental psychology, arguably developed the first modern scientific conception of emotion. In the first edition of Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele (Lectures on human and animal psychology), which was published in 1863, Wundt tried to establish that emotions were essential parts of rational thought. In fact, he considered them unconscious steps of decision-making that were implied in all processes of conscious thought. His early work deserves attention not only because it is the attempt to conceptualize cognition and emotion strictly from a neural point of view but also because it represents the very foundation of the debate about the nature of emotion that revolved around William James' theory of emotion during the 1890s. However, this aspect of his work is little known because scholars who have analyzed Wundt's work focused on his late career. Furthermore, historical analysis interpreted Wundt's work within a philosophical framework, rather than placing it in the context of German medical and physiological research in which it belongs. In addition, Wundt's early works are hardly available to an English speaking audience because they were never translated.

Anatomy of the eye from the view of Ibn Al-Haitham (965-1039). The founder of modern optics.

Ibn Al-Haitham (known as Alhazen in Latin [965 Basra, Iraq-1039, Cairo, Egypt]) was a scientist who played an important role in the middle age Islam world. He wrote many books and novels, but only 90 of them are known. His main book Kitab al-Manazir was translated into Western languages in the late twelfth century, and in the early thirteenth century. In this book, he formulated many hypotheses on optical science. The book, which is also known as Optic treasure (opticae thesaurus), affected many famous Western scientists. He became an authority until the seventeenth century in the Eastern and Western countries. Roger Bacon (1212-1294), who made radical changes in the Western optical traditions, reconfirmed Ibn Al-Haitham's findings. Ibn al-Haitham began his book Kitab al-Manazir with the anatomy and physiology of the eye. He specifically described cornea, humor aqueous, lens, and corpus vitreum. He examined the effect of light on seeing. He caused changes in the prevailing ideas of his age, and suggested that light came from objects, not from the eye. He provided information regarding the optic nerve, retina, iris, and conjunctiva. He showed the system of the eye as a dioptric, and the relations between the parts of the eye. It is understood that he mastered all knowledge on the structure of the eye in his century. The best proof of this is the eye picture that he drew.

[Regarding the Manuscript D " Dell' occhio " of Leonardo da Vinci]. / A propos du Manuscrit D "Dell'occhio" de Léonard de Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci's Manuscript D consists of five double pages sheets, which, folded in two, comprise ten folios. This document, in the old Tuscan dialect and mirror writing, reveals the ideas of Leonardo on the anatomy of the eye in relation to the formation of images and visual perception. Leonardo explains in particular the behavior of the rays in the eye in terms of refraction and reflection, and is very mechanistic in his conception of the eye and of the visual process. The most significant innovations found in these folios are the concept of the eye as a camera obscura and the intersection of light rays in the interior of the eye. His texts nevertheless show hesitation, doubts and a troubled confusion, reflecting the ideas and uncertainties of his era. He did not share his results in his lifetime, despite both printing and etching being readily available to him.

Special Section Guest Editorial: Celebration of the Britton Chance Legacy.

This guest editorial introduces the Special Section on Metabolic Imaging and Spectroscopy: Britton Chance 105th Birthday Commemorative.