Evidence supporting the primacy of Joseph Petzval in the discovery of aberration coefficients and their application to lens design

Andrew Rakich; Raymond Wilson

doi:10.1117/12.732666

25 September 2007 Evidence supporting the primacy of Joseph Petzval in the discovery of aberration coefficients and their application to lens design

Andrew Rakich, Raymond Wilson

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6668, Novel Optical Systems Design and Optimization X; 66680B (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.732666
Event: Optical Engineering + Applications, 2007, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

In 1839 Louis Daguerre published his process for permanently fixing optical images, and created an instant need for a high-aperture, relatively wide-field and well-corrected lens. Within a year, an optical design meeting all of these requirements was provided by Professor Joseph Petzval, a mathematician with no previous background in optics. This optical design was revolutionary in that it was well corrected for aberration over a wide-field at the unprecedented speed of f/3.5. As Petzval never published explicit details of his method for designing lenses, the credit for the invention of an aberration theory applicable to lens design has gone in the first place to Seidel, and later to those who developed high-order coefficients such as Schwarzschild, T Smith and Buchdahl. It is the contention of this paper that this has been an historical injustice, and that sufficient evidence exists, and indeed has existed in part since well before Seidel published his derivation of third-order aberration coefficients, to establish Petzval as the original pioneer of third-and-higher-order aberration theory as a tool for lens design.

Citation Download Citation

Andrew Rakich and Raymond Wilson "Evidence supporting the primacy of Joseph Petzval in the discovery of aberration coefficients and their application to lens design", Proc. SPIE 6668, Novel Optical Systems Design and Optimization X, 66680B (25 September 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.732666

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available