Timeline of Electromagnetism and Classical Optics - 17th Century

17th Century

• 1600 — Dutchman Sacharias Jansen invents a single-lens microscope.
• 1600 — William Gilbert, in his book de Magnete, wrote about systematic experiments in electricity and magnetism; deduced that the Earth is a giant magnet.
• 1604 — Johannes Kepler describes how the eye focuses light
• 1604 — Johann Kepler specifies the laws of the rectilinear propagation of light
• 1611 — Marko Dominis discusses the rainbow in De Radiis Visus et Lucis
• 1611 — Johannes Kepler discovers total internal reflection, a small-angle refraction law, and thin lens optics,
• 1621 — Willebrord van Roijen Snell states his Snell's law of refraction
• 1630 — Cabaeus finds that there are two types of electric charges
• 1637 — René Descartes quantitatively derives the angles at which primary and secondary rainbows are seen with respect to the angle of the Sun's elevation
• 1646 — Sir Thomas Browne first uses the word electricity is in his work Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
• 1657 — Pierre de Fermat introduces the principle of least time into optics
• 1660 — Otto von Guericke invents an early electrostatic generator.
• 1665 — Francesco Maria Grimaldi highlights the phenomenon of diffraction
• 1673 — Ignace Pardies provides a wave explanation for refraction of light
• 1675 — Robert Boyle discovers that electric attraction and repulsion can act across a vacuum and do not depend upon the air as a medium. Adds resin to the known list of "electrics."
• 1675 — Isaac Newton delivers his theory of light
• 1676 — Olaus Roemer measures the speed of light by observing Jupiter's moons
• 1678 — Christiaan Huygens states his principle of wavefront sources and demonstrates the refraction and diffraction of light rays.