During the reign of Ptolemy II in Egypt, the Greeks completed the Pharos of Alexandria
-- the tallest lighthouse ever built.
circa 10 B.C.
Candles have been used for over 2000 years. They have been made from
many substances, including beeswax and tallow.
A.D. 1590
A Dutch eyeglass maker, Zacharian Janssen, discovered the principle of the compound
microscope.
1609
Galileo built his first telescope.
1665
Robert Hooke used his compound microscope to observe the structure of cork. He was
the first to observe and name "little boxes," or cells.
1666
Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white light is made up of all colours.
1784
American scientist and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, invented bifocals.
1826
French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce producted the world's first photograph using a
camera obscura to give a permanent image.
1830s
French inventor Louis Daguerre, produced the first sharp,
detailed photographic image.
1852
Flourescence was first explained by Sir George G. Stokes, a British physicist.
1879
Thomas A. Edison invented his incandescent lamp
1888
George Eastman introduced the Kodak box camera.
1895
Wilhelm K. Roentgen, a German physicist, discovered X-rays.
1896
American inventor, Thomas A. Edison improved the fluoroscope so it could be used to view
x-ray images.
1909
Solar power became a reality when William J. Bailey developed the first modern
flat-plate collector in California.
1926
John Logie Baird demonstrated television, based on a mechanical method of
scanning an image into lines od dots of light.
1960
The first laser was built by T. H. maiman in the United States. It contained a
specially made ruby rod.
1990
The Hubble Space Telescope was lauched into orbit. Sensitive to both visible and
ultraviolet light, flaws in the main mirror caused the telescope to produce slightly
blurred images.
1992
The oldest light in the universe was discovered by the Cosmic Background Explorer
satellite.
