ABSTRACT
Up to the late 1940s, all optical designs had to be made by hand calculation, tracing rays with a logarithmic table. This method was extremely tedious and slow. To trace only one ray through an optical system took many hours of work and patience. Probably the earliest use of a computer to trace rays was by James G. Baker in 1944, who used the Mark I calculator at Harvard to trace rays. To trace only one skew ray through an optical surface on this machine took 120 sec.At the Institute ofOptics of theUniversity ofRochester, the first use of a computer to trace rays was made in 1953 for the IBM 650, by Robert E. Hopkins. Another leader in this field, at the Eastman Kodak Co., was Donald P. Feder. This computer work saved a lot of time in the design process, but the programs were just tools to make the whole process faster. Both methods were essentially the same. However, this work set up a solid foundation for future results. A good review of the history of automatic lens design is found in the article by Feder (1963). The methods being used are quite numerous (Brixner 1964a,b,c; Feder, 1951, 1957a, 1962; Grey, 1963a,b; Holladay, 1960; Hopkins, 1962a,b,c; Hopkins and Spencer, 1962; Meiron and Volinez, 1960; Peck, 1980; Stavroudis, 1964; Wynne, 1963). Present lens design programs are much better, but they are still far from being completely automatic. To operate them correctly a good optical design knowledge is absolutely necessary.
