THE GREATEST INVENTION OF THE PAST 2000 YEARS:
LENSES
It does seem an odd answer but i'll soon justify it....
Firstly, without lenses many people could not read this and i couldn't write this... and, even worse, you might never have been able to read or write, had your eyes needed correction. i remember wearing my first pair of glasses and suddenly having the whole world come into focus. while seeing properly is important, it seems limited to p0ick spectacles as the greatest invention. my vote is for all lenses big or small, convex or concave, alone or combined; the lenses we use to read the universe and the intricacies of life are variations of those we use to read a written word........ just come to think of it, lenses hv prevented the world from being ruled by people under the age of 40
so, let's start with plain ol' spectacles. we dont really know when they first came into use. they started appearing in Italy in 1300's and by 1600 there were specialized artisans who ground lenses and kept their tricks secret.
one of them, a Dutch spectacle maker, Lippershey, saw that a combination of two lenses made an object look bigger. he made the first telescopes hoping to become rich. he didn't succeed but several telescopes were made. one of them reached Galileo Galilei. he pointed his device towards the night sky and looked out. he destroyed it, reconstructed it and improved it. what he saw changed our view of the world. the sun rotated around its axis, Venus revolved around the sun, the moon had mountains and valleys, Jupiter had 4 moons, the Milky Way was made up of large no. of stars. Copernicus and Kepler were right and Ptolemy was wrong............ earth was not the center of the universe.....and there was no going back, there started the space exploration.........
from telescope to microscope. they were discovered at about the same time.....not surprising..as they both involved just the simple piecing together of the right two lenses in correct positions. Galileo used the microscope to see flies the size of sheep, spots of dirt the size of rocks but ignored its significance.... in 1665, Robert Hooke published MICROGRAPHIA. The book contained pictures ............a fly's eye, picture of a louse etc..... then Anton van Leeuwenhoek made a lens of magnifying power -- 500. at that point, a drop of water turned out to be filled with little animals swimming in it. it was the discovery of bacteria..............................
but still the greatest lens of all time was not invented in tha lst 2000 years but much before that, the eye. it was invented by a great inventor......... evolution.
we all know how light rays enter our eye, are immediately bent towards the retina by the cornea. the rays then meet the second focusser, the eye lens -- structured like an onion --- with transparent layers, designed for optimum focusing. the image focussed on retina which has visual cortex and voila.... we see the image
the greatest invention f the last 2000 years, for me is the lens..... but if we talk about all time, its the brain which figured it out how to use the lens..........
please write wat u feel is the greatest invention of the past 2000 years and also giv ur comments
best of luck
Prateek
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4 comments:
what i learnt from your artycl is dt in life, everythings connected,,, had lenses not been invented telescope wouldn't have been, and then we wouldn't have had discovered that earth revolves around the sun and thus hte existence of the solar system and so on........
Now commenting further, apart from the content fo the artycl,, i like your writing style, everythings connected... like that... but ya, had also like to comment try and refrain yourself from going into so much details if you want a wide readership, not many people are so technical and really don't bother about things like when it was invented and by whom, so they had lose interest very fast.....
Is lens the greatest invention of the past 2000 years?
i couldn't say that for if it was then wouldn't you say that things it is made from is an even more important invention? as in this case it would be glass. wouldn't it?
also glass is much more useful, used at many more places so it seems better right? but then again it also isn't the biggest invention as isn't the things it is made from the biggest invention??? and then so on.......
So personally i think that the all time biggest invention was and is OUR BRAIN AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO USE IT.
what do you think????
i disagree with u saying that glass is d greatest invention. glass ws invented long ago bt one couldn't hv figured out hw 2 create a lens
bt i agree tht d brain is d greatest invention ever, bt my self imposed restriction is upto past 2000 years and thus i came down to lenses. i just felt d greatest invention had 2 b th invention abt wich i cud rite d most
bhai mere, u cn ryt bout nethng a lot, as long as u ve an open access to d internet.....!
Nd hey i dnt say tht Glass is actually d gr8est invention m jus saying tht u really cnt name one invention as they are all interconnected and widout 1 anodr cant tak plac...
+ if u wanna tok bout jus the past 2000yrs dn too many odr inventions may come in nd tak priority, lyk computers or motor or mayb engine... many such thngs,,, hw cn u deny thm.?
Its all bout d perspective....
I thnk 4m dis artycl wt u wana say is, dt hw such a small nd oftn neglected thng as a lens is of such gr8 importance.. nd tht i totally agree wid!
dere r many inventions science has given us like the electric bulb, engine, motor etc. therefore if I want to select d greatest invention, it has to b d one that kickstarted the scientific development. Galileo by proving that the earth was not at d center of the universe by observing jupiters' moons proved an age old theory wrong Historians and Experts blv that it ws certainly this theory of galileo that 4 d 1st time quetioned the authority of the church. that is why galileo ws put under house arrest by the church. wat i am trying to say was that the church ruled d society of that era.
and galileo by questioning d authority of the church kickstarted scientific development
and he did that using the telescope. so in a way the telescope brought abt the thouht of reasoning and questioning the church and existing thoughts and traditions. lenses brought abt renaissance and the age of science. lenses are the greatest invention.
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