ABSTRACT
The name of Alhazen (Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibu Alhasan) is often mentioned in connection with the early history of Optics. The only mention Alhazen made of lenses, however, appears to be his statement that if an object is placed at the base of the larger segment of a glass sphere, it will appear magnified. In 1671 appeared the well-known book by a Pere Cherubin d'Orleans which not only deals with optics, with telescopes and microscopes, their theory and construction and use, but with lens making and the various machines invented by himself to lessen the labour. Sir Isaac Newton was the first to make a successful reflecting telescope. It is true that James Gregory had proposed his Gregorian telescope in 1663 and the next year came to London to commission the manufacture of such a telescope from Reive, a famous London optician. Some optical grinding and polishing machinery appears to have been made and used early in the seventeenth century.
