5. Optical lenses, opening a world of invisible possibilities
The Archimedes Screw is an example of complex engineering, insofar as it required some design and construction skill to devise a working model. Human creativity and ingenuity really entered a stratospheric level when man began to tinker with devices and materials, exploring the laws of physics, and creating engineering formulas around those laws. The Antikythera Mechanism proved that ancient Greeks were already pondering gears and levers, and correlating them to the observable celestial movements.
Glass technology goes back to the use of obsidian as a toolmaking material, but glass manufacturer, its origins again lost in history, was one of those formative processes coalescing as the Industrial Revolution loomed. It is hard to imagine modern life and technology without glass, and certainly the science of optics would be stillborn. Optics began, of course, with an appreciation of the refractive qualities of glass, which led to the development of the eyeglass, and soon the microscope, the camera and the telescope. The word ‘lens’ comes from the shape of a ‘lentil’, and the earliest mention of the principal can be found in old Greek texts, although the technology developed along a much broader front.
Most importantly, though, optics meant the extended viability of individual scholarship, and so as the march of the information age gathered strength, optical lenses certainly sharpened the edges and made it all readable.