300 BC -1800

• 300 BC - Euclid discussed the focus of a spherical mirror.
• 50 AD - Cleomedes discussed the refraction of light.
• 139 AD - Claudius Ptolemy made detailed tables on the reflection and refraction of light.
• ~1010 - Althazen (965-1038) described the planar nature of reflection.
• 1304 - Theodoric of Freiberg explained the water-droplet origins of rainbows.
• ~1500 - Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) mentioned diffraction in his notebooks.
• 1608 - Hans Lippershey made one of the first telescopes. Shortly afterwards, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) made a telescope and turned it to the heavens.
• ~1609 - Zacarias Joannides made the first microscope.
• ~1620 - Willebrord Snell van Royen (1591-1626) discovered the law of refraction.
• 1637 - Descartes derived the law of refraction theoretically.
• 1663 - Robert Boyle (1627-1691) first observed interference rings, now known as Newton's rings.

Chromatic decomposition of light had been known for a long time, if only through the rainbow. In the second half of the 17th century, Isaac Newton named "spectrum" the coloured figure obtained by scattering sunlight through a prism. Beginning in 1666, Newton demonstrated the fixity of the colours thus formed, and synthesized white light by mixing these colours.

Chromatic decomposition of light had been known for a long time, if only through the rainbow. In the second half of the 17th century, Isaac Newton named "spectrum" the coloured figure obtained by scattering sunlight through a prism. Beginning in 1666, Newton demonstrated the fixity of the colours thus formed, and synthesized white light by mixing these colours.

• 1669 - Bartholinus discovered the polarisation of light by Iceland spar.
• 1678 - Römer determined the speed of light, by observing Jupiter's moons.
• 1690 - Christian Huygens (1629-1695) proposed a wave theory of light.
• 1728 - Bradley discovered the aberration of light.
• 1729 - Chester Moor-Hall (1704-1771) and John Dollond (1760-1761) made the first aberration-corrected lens.
• 1752 - T Melvill published first observation of a line spectrum.
• 1800 - W Herschel discovered the Infrared, by its heating effect.

Authors: Jean Charles Lefebvre, Jobin-Yvon Emission, and Richard Payling, Surface Analytical

Reference: R D Guenther, Modern Optics, John Wiley & Sons, New York (1990).

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Early 19th century

• 1801 - J W Ritter and W H Wollaston discovered Ultraviolet, by its chemical effects.
• 1801 - Thomas Young presented the principle of the interference of light.

In 1802, William Hyde Wollaston fitted the entrance of his spectroscope with a fine slit to improve resolution and discovered the presence of fixed black lines within the solar spectrum.
     In 1814, Joseph von Fraunhofer invented the diffraction grating (transmission). After fitting it onto a theodolite, he resumed Wollaston's work and marked the relative positions of several hundreds of black lines. He was, however, unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for their presence.

• 1807 - Young presented the three colour theory of vision.
• 1811 - Arago discovered rotary polarization by quartz.
• 1813 - Arago discovered the polarization of scattered light.
• 1815 - Fresnel rediscovered the interference of light.
• 1818 - Fresnel explained the polarisation of light.
• 1826 - Balard discovered the photo-sensitivity of silver bromide.
• 1826 - Talbot and Herschel studied the changing colours of flames when sodium, potassium, lithium and strontium salts were introduced into the flame.

Authors: Jean Charles Lefebvre, Jobin-Yvon Emission and Richard Payling, Surface Analytical
First published on the web: 15 December 1999.

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Mid 19th century

In 1832, J F Herschel described the specific coloration given to flames by metal salts. This was the first spectrochemistry observation, from which major work on emission spectra originated. It was fast found that emission spectra include bright lines at set locations.

• 1835 - Schwerd developed a "wave" theory of the diffraction grating.
• 1837 - Knox discovered that the conductivity of selenium changes with illumination.
• 1840 - Joseph Max Petzval (1807-1891) made the first portrait camera lens.
• 1842 - Doppler discovered the effect named after him, that the wavelength of light changes with the speed of the source relative to the observer.
• 1845 - Michael Faraday (1791-1867) observed that a magnetic field could rotate the plane of polarization of light.
• 1850 - Foucault showed that light travels more slowly in water than in air, as predicted by wave theory.

M A Masson introduced in 1851 the apparatus shown above. This is the first spark emission spectrometer known. The set-up consists of a prism mounted on a Duboscq goniometer with a rather complete sparking source. Underneath the set-up are records of the position of iron and copper emission lines in the visible domain.

• 1856 - Ludwig Philipp van Seidel (1821-1896) derived the theory of third order aberration.

Authors: Jean Charles Lefebvre, Jobin-Yvon Emission,
and Richard Payling, Surface Analytical

First published on the web: 15 December 1999.

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In 1859, Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen demonstrated the reversibility of emission lines:
"within the spectrum, an element absorbs the light at the exact location of the lines which it can emit". They stated the basic law of elementary spectrometry which states: "each element has specific properties as regards the light it emits".

They explained Fraunhofer's black lines as being caused by the absorption of solar light by metal vapours present in the colder layers surrounding the sun. They even identified the element responsible for some of these black lines.
     This work paved the way for atomic spectrochemistry and announced the advent of modern physics.

• 1860 - Foucault observed the absorption of spectral lines in one flame by another.
• 1864 - James Clark Maxwell presented the electromagnetic theory of light.
• 1866 - William Huggins made the first spectroscopic study of a nova.
• 1868 - A J Ångström published a compilation of all the visible lines in the solar spectrum.
• 1869 - Ångström made the first reflection grating.
• 1873 - Abbe described the optical limit in imaging.
• 1873 - Maxwell presented his 'Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'.
• 1877 - Gouy invented the first pneumatic nebuliser for introducing liquids into flames. 
• 1882 - H A Rowland greatly improved diffraction gratings, introducing curved gratings.
• 1885 - J J Balmer found a formula for the Hydrogen series; J R Rydberg and W Ritz then found formulae for other simple spectra.
• 1891 - Gabriel Lippmann made the first colour photographic plate.
• 1893 - V  Schumann studied the 'vacuum' Ultraviolet.
• 1897 - J J Thomson discovered the electron.
• 1899 - Hertz developed the theory of dipole radiation, the basis of modern radio.
• 1900 - Max Planck discovered the quantum.

Authors: Jean Charles Lefebvre, Jobin-Yvon Emission, and Richard Payling, Surface Analytical

First published on the web: 15 December 1999.

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Early 20th century

• 1905 - Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect.
• 1905 - Einstein presented the special theory of relativity, in which the speed of light is independent of the motion of its source and constant in any inertial frame of reference.
• 1913 - Neils Bohr's theory of the atom, explains the Balmer, Rydberg and Ritz formulas of simple spectra.
• 1913 - Johannes Stark discovered the Stark effect, the splitting of spectral lines in an electric field.
• 1923 - Compton explained x-ray scattering.
• 1925-7 - Quantum theory of the atom, developed by many people including Wolfgang Pauli (exclusion principles), Werner Heisenberg (uncertainty principle), Erwin Schrödinger (wave equation), Louis de Broglie, Max Born (wave function as probability), Jordan, and Paul A M Dirac (relativistic wave equation).
• 1928 - Neils Bohr proposed the Complementarity Principle.
• 1930 - Gerlach and Scweitzer introduced the ratio method for intensities.
• 1936 - Thanheiser and Heyes used photocells to measure intensities.
• 1942-9 - Giulio Racah presented his formulation of the angular components of Schrödinger's equation.
• ~1945 - P M Duffieux and R K Luneberg introduced Fourier methods to optics.
• 1947 - Willis E Lamb discovered the Lamb shift.
• 1947 - Dennis Gabor developed holography.
• 1948 - Sin-itiro Tomonaga, Julian S Schwinger and Richard P Feynman developed quantum electrodynamics (QED).
• 1949 - D R Bates and Agnette Damgaard presented an approximate solution to the radial part of Schrödinger’s equation.
• 1950 - A Kastler caused population inversion in excited atoms.

First published on the web: 15 December 1999.

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Late 20th century

• 1951 - E M Purcell and R V Pound first observed net induced emission.
• 1951-2 - C H Townes, Nikolai G Basov and Alexandr M Prokhorov first suggested the principle of the maser.
• 1953 - Zernike awarded the Nobel Prize for phase-contrast microscope
• 1954 - Alan Walsh invented the atomic absorption spectometer (AAS)
• 1960 - T H Maiman demonstrated the first simple laser.
• 1965 - S J I L Greenfield invented 'high-power' ICP
• 1966 - Alfred Kastler awarded Nobel Prize for optical methods for studying atomic energy levels.
• 1967 - W Grimm invented his glow discharge source.
• 1968 - Grimm presented the first quantitative analysis with his new source.
• 1969 - V A Fassel and P W J M Boumans developed 'low-power' ICP.
• 1970 - J E Greene and J M Whelan reported the first depth profile with the Grimm glow discharge source.
• 1972 - C J Belle and J D Johnson reported the first quantitative depth profile with the Grimm source.
• 1972 - Boumans determined the main characteristics of the Grimm glow discharge.
• 1973 - Charlotte E Moore published extensive tables of atomic energy levels.
• 1975 - Roger Berneron demonstrated the wide capabilities of GD-OES for qualitative depth profiling.
• 1978 - Ritzl produced the first commercial GD-OES instrument using the Grimm source.
• 1985 - J Pons-Corbeau introduced the first algorithm for quantitative depth profiling in GD-OES.
• 1988 - M Chevrier and Richard Passetemps invented the first radio frequency powered Grimm source.

First published on the web: 15 March 2000.

Author: Richard Payling, Surface Analytical

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