A wonderful multi-part post - well written. By Roger Cicala writing at DP Review.
The first known photograph was taken in 1827 so this is still a very new technology.
This fragment caught my eye - fun bit of history:
The lenses were generally simple; single concave or convex pieces of glass. These were fine for spectacles but had massive chromatic aberration which was an issue in telescopes and microscopes. Newton had suggested that different types of glass could be combined to counteract ‘chroma’ making an ‘achromatic’ lens. An English inventor, Chester Moore Hall, figured out a way to do this around 1730. He wanted to keep the idea secret, hoping he would have a better telescope than his colleagues. So, he had paid one lensmaker to make an element of crown glass (low refractile glass), another to make a matching element of flint glass (high refractile ‘leaded’ glass), and planned to combine the elements himself.
The two lensmakers Hall contracted with were both rather busy, so each paid a third lensmaker, George Bass, to actually make the two lens elements. Bass noticed how the two elements would fit together and figured out the achromatic nature of the paired lens elements, but he sent the two separate lenses back to the original lensmakers without saying anything. To them at least. He did quietly make some achromatic doublets himself and a few other lensmakers copied them.
Years later, Bass mentioned this achromatic lens to John Dollond, whose son, Peter, was a lensmaker. Our boy John established the sleazy side of lens making, reproducing these lenses and writing a paper in the 1758 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society claiming he had figured it all out himself. Dolland, of course, patented the invention. Bass and about half of England sued Dollond over the patent. The courts agreed Dolland hadn’t discovered the achromat, but because he was the first to state the business application, his patent was upheld. He became quite rich, getting a royalty from every achromatic lens made for several years.
There are five parts out now - a fascinating read:
- Imaging before photography - a history lesson (Part 1)
- Imaging before photography, Part II – The Aristocrat
- Imaging Before Photography, Part III -- The Showman and the Sheriff
- The Beginning of Photography: The Drama of 1839
- Lens Wars: Episode V - Petzval Strikes Back
Fun stuff - I do hope that Roger expands this out into a full book - I would get this in a heartbeat.