Imagine a world without lenses

Most of the world's population would not be able to read this page. We could not examine the infinite universe of the stars or the infinitesimally small universe of bacteria. Crime detection would be severely hampered without the microscopic power of lenses. There would be no photography or movies.

Lenses have been vital in the evolution of mankind by opening up new realms of data that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Early Magnifiers

The ancient Egyptians and Greeks probably discovered the magnifying effect of simple lenses when grinding and polishing precious stones.

Alhazen (Arabian - 962 to 1038) described the magnifying property of a lens, but his observations were not appreciated until the thirteenth century through the work of Roger Bacon (1214 - 1294).

Around 1268, from this knowledge, spectacles began to develop. Their actual invention is usually credited to Salvino d'Armato of Florence who died in 1317.

Star Gazing

In 1609, Galileo Galilei (1564 -1642) combined 2 lenses in a rudimentary telescope and studied the solar system. Although not the first person to make a telescope, he refined his device from earlier models by Hans Jansen (1590) and John Lippershey (1608). What he saw changed forever our view of the world.

Galileo discovered that the sun rotated around its axis, Venus revolved round the sun, the moon has mountains and valleys, and the Milky Way is made up of vast numbers of stars. The earlier vision of the universe was wrong, in which it was thought that the earth was the centre of the universe. Galileo launched us on the way to space exploration.

Microscopic powers

Galileo also constructed a microscope, studied flies wings and specks of dirt through lenses but didn't see how to make use of this discovery. In 1678, Anton van Leeuwenhoek (a haberdasher) made a lens with a magnifying power of 500. This led to the discovery of bacteria, but another 200 years were to pass before anyone knew what to do with this find. From this discovery came treatment for numerous of the world's diseases.

Want to know more about lenses

The history of spectacles
What to expect from an eye test in the UK and Northern Ireland
What your spectacles prescription means
About sunglasses
About lens tints
Myths about spectacles