Ferlin, Fabrice (Author)
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 59
Issue: 4
Pages: 308-319
In his Opticks, published in 1704, Newton thought he had demonstrated the impossibility to eliminate chromatic aberration for lens systems. However, in 1748 Euler proposed a theory supposed to eliminate both chromatic and spherical aberrations in telescopes' objectives. A controversy soon ensued between Dollond who built the first achromatic glasses in 1758 and Euler whose theory appeared to be problematical because it was based on a wrong law of light scattering. In the early 1760s Clairaut and D'Alembert developed in competition a theory of optical aberrations that addresses both the chromatic aberration and geometric aberrations, including off-axis, which appeared in four of the five so-called Seidel aberrations. However several sociological, technological, and scientific factors precluded its application to the manufacturing of optical instruments. Subsequent scholars thus ignored these contributions until almost a century later. This article examines the work of Clairaut and D'Alembert, which undoubtedly constitutes one of the major progresses in theoretical optics in the age of Enlightenment, and intends to offer a new light on this period, which is often considered as an era of stagnation in optics.
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Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Bollettino di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche
Vistas in Astronomy
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences
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