Early Developments
- 424 BC Aristophanes "lens" is a glass globe filled with water.(Seneca says that it can be used to read letters no matter how small or dim)
- 4th century BC Mo Di first mentions the camera obscura, a pin-hole camera.
- 3rd century BC Euclid is the first to write about reflection and refraction and notes that light travels in straight lines
- 130 AD. — Claudius Ptolemy (in his work Optics) wrote about the properties of light including: reflection, refraction, and color and tabulated angles of refraction for several media
- 1021 — Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) writes the Book of Optics, studying vision.
- 1088 — Shen Kuo first recognizes magnetic declination.
- 1187 — Alexander Neckham is first in Europe to describe the magnetic compass and its use in navigation.
- 1269 — Pierre de Maricourt describes magnetic poles and remarks on the nonexistence of isolated magnetic poles
- 1305 — Dietrich von Freiberg uses crystalline spheres and flasks filled with water to study the reflection and refraction in raindrops that leads to primary and secondary rainbows
- 1550 — Gerolamo Cardano writes about electricity in De Subtilitate distinguishing, perhaps for the first time, between electrical and magnetic forces.
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Electromagnetism And Classical Optics
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