Optics Timeline | Optics for Kids

an optical clock

Optics Timeline

Optics is the physical science that studies the origin and propagation of light, how it changes, what effects it produces, and other phenomena associated with it. This "Optics Timeline" highlights important events and developments in the science of optics from prehistory to the beginning of the 21st century. It also includes related developments in other fields and related milestones in the human worldview.

1900

1900 — Quantum Physics introduced.

Max Planck

1900 — Kodak Brownie Camera

Eastman

1900 — Developed the science of crystal analysis via X-ray diffraction

William Henry Bragg & William Lawrence Bragg

1905 — Photoelectric effect explained.

Albert Einstein

1905 — Hale/Palomar telescopes

1905 — Hubble theory

1906 — Kinemacolor developed

George Albert Smith and Charles Urban

Kinemacolor was the first commercially successful photographic color process

1907 — Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investications carried out with their aid."

A. A. Michelson

1907 — Echelon grating spectroscope

A. A. Michelson

1909 — Measured the charge of an electron.

Robert A. Milikan