History
In 984, Ibn Sahl first discovered the law of refraction, usually called Snell's law, which he used to work out the shapes of anaclastic lenses that focus light with no geometric aberrations.
Early attempts at making aspheric lenses to correct spherical aberration were made by René Descartes in the 1620s, and by Constantijn Huygens in the 1630s; the cross-section of the shape devised by Descartes for this purpose is known as a Cartesian oval. The Visby lenses found in Viking treasures on the island of Gotland dating from the 10th or 11th century are also aspheric, but exhibit a wide variety of image qualities, ranging from similar to modern aspherics in one case to worse than spheric lenses in others. The origin of the lenses is unknown, as is their purpose (they may have been made as jewelry rather than for imaging).
Francis Smethwick ground the first high-quality aspheric lenses and presented them to the Royal Society on February 27, 1667/8. A telescope containing three aspheric elements was judged by those present "to exceed in goodness, by taking in a greater Angle and representing the Objects more exactly in their respective proportions, and enduring a greater Aperture, free from Colours." Aspheric reading and burning glasses also outdid their spherical equivalents.
Moritz von Rohr is usually credited with the design of the first aspheric lenses for eyeglasses. He invented the eyeglass lens designs that became the Zeiss Punktal lenses.
The world's first commercial, mass produced aspheric lens element was manufactured by Elgeet for use in the Golden Navitar 12 mm f/1.2 wide angle lens for use on 16 mm movie cameras in 1956. This lens received a great deal of industry acclaim during its day. The aspheric elements were created by the use of a membrane polishing technique.
Read more about this topic: Aspheric Lens
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