HISTORY OF
LIGHT
TIMELINE
600 BC
PYTHAGORAS
In ancient Greece, many people studied light. In
the sixth century B.C., a mathematician called
Pythagoras tried to explain how we see light. He
thought light consisted of beams. These beams
came from a person’s eyes in straight lines, and
the sense of sight occurred when these beams
touched the objects a person was looking at.
There was a problem with this theory. If it
were true, then we would be able to see in the
dark. In spite of this problem, Pythagoras’s theory
was accepted for many years
1000 AD
AL-HAYTHAM
Hasan Ibn al-Haytham was a mathematician,
astronomer and a physicist during medieval times. He is
considered the world's first scientist. He was born in 965
AD and died in 1040 AD. He's famous as the founder of
psycho physics and experimental psychology. alHaytham was able to explain how we can see things
when light reflects from the object and the reflected ray
passes one's eyes and that's how we're able to see
things in different colour, shape and form. He was also
the first person to create a "camera". It's called a
Camera Obscura. His discovery was accurate.
1676 AD
OLE ROMER
Rømer's determination of the speed of light
was the demonstration in 1676 that light has
a finite speed and so does not travel
instantaneously. calculated the speed of
light by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's
moon during the years 1668–1674. His
discovery was accepted by many. It helps us
create light bulbs, and many other luminous
objects.
1807
THOMAS YOUNG
in 1807 he showed that when light
coming from a point light source is
shined onto two pinholes, interference
fringes can be observed on a screen
an appropriate distance away
(Young’s Experiment) and advocated
his theory that light behaves like a
wave.
300 BC
EUCLID
Euclid was known as a genius mathematician.
He discovered the law of reflection in 300 BC.
He states that light travels in straight lines and
reflects from a surface at the same angle as
the incident ray. Scientists approved Euclid's
discovery. Law of reflection could help us
create magnificent things such as different
types of telescopes, binoculars, mirrors and
microscopes.
100 AD
PTOLEMY
Ptolemy studied refraction, reflection,
light, and color. It was said that his
studies was among the first to
understand how refraction works,
especially how light changes direction
or style as it passes through different
mediums and people approved it. His
discovery was accurate and It helps us
understand the basic of light and
create many other things.
1660S
NEWTON
Newton discovered that white light is a
mixture of different colours of light. As the light passes
through the
prism, it split up into many separate colours. Passing the
rainbow
colours through a second prism, Newton showed that the
separate
colours combined back into white light. Newton laid the
path for others to experiment with colour scientificallyr.
People around the world approved his discovery.
1690
CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS
In 1690, he published a paper on light
supporting his theory that light is a wave or
wavefront. He used this theory of light as a
wave to explain reflection and refraction of
light. After much heated debate against
Newton's particle theory of light, Huygens'
theory that light was a wave became the
mainstream scientific concept.
1920S
MICHELSON
Ole Romer's
measurement was refined in the
1920s by a scientist named Albert A.
Michelson. He placed two mirrors on
the tops of two mountains in
California and measured the distance between the two
mirrors,
which was 35.4 km. He then sent a beam of light from one
mirror to
the other. He used extremely accurate timing devices to
measure
how long it took the beam to reach the second mountain. By
dividing the distance by the time, he calculated the speed of
light
as it travels through Earth’s atmosphere to be 299 798 km/s.
Scientists approved his discovery.