A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or .) is a type of composite compact lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections.
The simpler dioptric (purely refractive) form of the lens was first proposed by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and independently reinvented by the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) for use in lighthouses... The catadioptric (combining refraction and reflection) form of the lens, entirely invented by Fresnel, has outer prismatic elements that use total internal reflection as well as refraction to capture more oblique light from the light source and add it to the beam, making it visible at greater distances.
The design allows the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the mass and volume of material that would be required by a lens of conventional design. A Fresnel lens can be made much thinner than a comparable conventional lens, in some cases taking the form of a flat sheet.
Because of its use in lighthouses, it has been called "the invention that saved a million ships".
History
Forerunners
The first person to focus a lighthouse beam using a lens was the London glass-cutter Thomas Rogers, who proposed the idea to Trinity House in 1788. The first Rogers lenses, in diameter and thick at the center, were installed at the Old Lower Lighthouse at Portland Bill in 1789. Behind each lamp was a back-coated spherical glass mirror, which reflected rear radiation back through the lamp and into the lens. Further samples were installed at Howth Baily, North Foreland, and at least four other locations by 1804. But much of the light was wasted by absorption in the glass.Levitt, 2013, p.57.
In 1748, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was the first to replace a convex lens with a series of concentric annular prisms, ground as steps in a single piece of glass, to reduce weight and absorption. In 1790 (although secondary sources give the date as 1773 or 1788), the Marquis de Condorcet suggested that it would be easier to make the annular sections separately and assemble them on a frame; but even that was impractical at the time.Levitt, 2013, p.71. These designs were intended not for lighthouses, but for burning glasses. David Brewster, however, proposed a system similar to Condorcet's in 1811, and by 1820 was advocating its use in British lighthouses.
Publication and refinement
The French (Commission of Lighthouses) was established by Napoleon in 1811, and placed under the authority of French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel's employer, the Corps of Bridges and Roads. As the members of the commission were otherwise occupied, it achieved little in its early years.Levitt, 2013, pp. 49–50. However, on 21 June 1819—three months after winning the physics of the Academy of Sciences for his celebrated memoir on diffraction—Fresnel was "temporarily" seconded to the commission on the recommendation of François Arago (a member since 1813), to review possible improvements in lighthouse illumination.Levitt, 2013, pp. 51, 53; Elton, 2009, p.190; Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, p.xcvii, and vol. 3, p.xxiv. ("July 21" in Levitt, 2013, p.240, is a transcription error, inconsistent with the primary source cited.)
By the end of August 1819, unaware of the Buffon-Condorcet-Brewster proposal, Fresnel made his first presentation to the commission,Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 3, pp. 5–14; on the date, see p.6n. Levitt (2013, p.58) gives the date only as August 1819. recommending what he called ('lenses by steps') to replace the reflectors then in use, which reflected only about half of the incident light.Levitt, 2013, pp. 56, 58. Another report by Fresnel, dated 29 August 1819 (Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 3, pp. 15–21), concerns tests on reflectors, and does not mention stepped lenses except in an unrelated sketch on the last page of the manuscript. The minutes of the meetings of the Commission go back only to 1824, when Fresnel himself took over as Secretary.Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 3, p.6n. Thus the exact date on which Fresnel formally recommended is unknown. Much to Fresnel's embarrassment, one of the assembled commissioners, Jacques Charles, recalled Buffon's suggestion. However, whereas Buffon's version was biconvex and in one piece,Levitt, 2013, p.59. The biconvex shape may be inferred from Buffon's description, quoted in Fresnel, 1822, tr. Tag, at p.4. Fresnel's was plano-convex and made of multiple prisms for easier construction.
With an official budget of 500 francs, Fresnel approached three manufacturers. The third, François Soleil, found a way to remove defects by reheating and remolding the glass. Arago assisted Fresnel with the design of a modified Argand lamp with concentric wicks (a concept that Fresnel attributed to Count RumfordFresnel, 1822, tr. Tag, p.11.), and accidentally discovered that fish glue was heat-resistant, making it suitable for use in the lens. The prototype, finished in March 1820, had a square lens panel on a side, containing 97 polygonal (not annular) prisms—and so impressed the Commission that Fresnel was asked for a full eight-panel version. This model, completed a year later in spite of insufficient funding, had panels square. In a public spectacle on the evening of 13 April 1821, it was demonstrated by comparison with the most recent reflectors, which it suddenly rendered obsolete.Levitt, 2013, pp. 59–66. Levitt gives the size of the eight-panel version as . Elton (2009, p.193) gives it as 76cm (30 inches) and indicates that the first panel was tested on 31 October 1820; cf. Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 3, pp. xxxii & xxxiv, and Fresnel, 1822, tr. Tag, p.7.
Soon after this demonstration, Fresnel published the idea that light, including apparently unpolarized light, consists exclusively of transverse waves, and went on to consider the implications for double refraction and partial reflection.A. Fresnel, "Note sur le calcul des teintes que la polarisation développe dans les lames cristallisées" et seq., Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 102–111 (May 1821), 167–196 (June 1821), 312–315 ("Postscript", July 1821); reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–1870, vol. 1, pp. 609–648; translated as "On the calculation of the tints that polarization develops in crystalline plates, & postscript", / , 2021.
Fresnel acknowledged the British lenses and Buffon's invention in a memoir read on 29 July 1822 and printed in the same year.Fresnel, 1822, tr. Tag, pp. 2–4. The date of that memoir may be the source of the claim that Fresnel's lighthouse advocacy began two years later than Brewster's; but the text makes it clear that Fresnel's involvement began no later than 1819.Fresnel, 1822, tr. Tag, p.1.
Fresnel's next lens was a rotating apparatus with eight "bull's-eye" panels, made in annular arcs by Saint-Gobain, giving eight rotating beams—to be seen by mariners as a periodic flash. Above and behind each main panel was a smaller, sloping bull's-eye panel of trapezoidal outline with trapezoidal elements. This refracted the light to a sloping plane mirror, which then reflected it horizontally, 7 degrees ahead of the main beam, increasing the duration of the flash.Fresnel, 1822, tr. Tag, pp. 13, 25. Below the main panels were 128 small mirrors arranged in four rings, stacked like the slats of a louver or Venetian blind. Each ring, shaped like a frustum of a cone, reflected the light to the horizon, giving a fainter steady light between the flashes. The official test, conducted on the unfinished on 20 August 1822, was witnessed by the Commission—and by Louis XVIII and his entourage—from away. The apparatus was stored at Bordeaux for the winter, and then reassembled at Cordouan Lighthouse under Fresnel's supervision—in part by Fresnel's own hands. On 25 July 1823, the world's first lighthouse Fresnel lens was lit.Elton, 2009, p.195; Levitt, 2013, pp. 72–76. As expected, the light was visible to the horizon, more than out.
The day before the test of the Cordouan lens in Paris, a committee of the Academy of Sciences reported on Fresnel's memoir and supplements on double refraction—which, although less well known to modern readers than his earlier work on diffraction, struck a more decisive blow for the wave theory of light.Buchwald, 1989, pp. 260, 288–290, 297; cf. Born & Wolf, 1999, p.xxviii. Between the test and the reassembly at Cordouan, Fresnel submitted his papers on photoelasticity (16 September 1822), elliptical and circular polarization and optical rotation (9 December), and partial reflection and total internal reflection (7 January 1823),Fresnel, 1866–1870, vol. 1, pp. 713–718, 731–751, 767–799. essentially completing his reconstruction of physical optics on the transverse wave hypothesis. Shortly after the Cordouan lens was lit, Fresnel started coughing up blood.Levitt, 2013, p.97.
In May 1824, Fresnel was promoted to Secretary of the , becoming the first member of that body to draw a salary,Levitt, 2013, p.82. albeit in the concurrent role of Engineer-in-Chief.Elton, 2009, p.190. Late that year, being increasingly ill, he curtailed his fundamental research and resigned his seasonal job as an examiner at the , in order to save his remaining time and energy for his lighthouse work.Young, 1855, p.399; Boutry, 1948, pp. 601–602.
In the same year he designed the first fixed lens—for spreading light evenly around the horizon while minimizing waste above or below. Ideally the curved refracting surfaces would be segments of toroids about a common vertical axis, so that the dioptric panel would look like a cylindrical drum. If this was supplemented by reflecting (catoptric) rings above and below the refracting (dioptric) parts, the entire apparatus would look like a beehive.Cf. Elton, 2009, p.198, Figure 12. The second Fresnel lens to enter service was indeed a fixed lens, of third order, installed at Dunkirk by 1 February 1825.Levitt, 2013, p.84. However, due to the difficulty of fabricating large toroidal prisms, this apparatus had a 16-sided polygonal plan.Elton, 2009, pp. 197–198.
In 1825 Fresnel extended his fixed-lens design by adding a rotating array outside the fixed array. Each panel of the rotating array was to refract part of the fixed light from a horizontal fan into a narrow beam.Elton, 2009, pp. 198–199.
Also in 1825, Fresnel unveiled the ('lighthouse map'), calling for a system of 51 lighthouses plus smaller harbor lights, in a hierarchy of lens sizes called "orders" (the first being the largest), with different characteristics to facilitate recognition: a constant light (from a fixed lens), one flash per minute (from a rotating lens with eight panels), and two per minute (16 panels).Levitt, 2013, pp. 82–84.
In late 1825,Elton, 2009, p.200. to reduce the loss of light in the reflecting elements, Fresnel proposed to replace each mirror with a catadioptric prism, through which the light would travel by refraction through the first surface, then total internal reflection off the second surface, then refraction through the third surface.Levitt, 2013, pp. 79–80. The result was the lighthouse lens as we now know it. In 1826 he assembled a small model for use on the , but he did not live to see a full-sized version: he died on 14 July 1827, at the age of 39.
After Fresnel
The first stage of the development of lighthouse lenses after the death of Augustin Fresnel consisted in the implementation of his designs. This was driven in part by his younger brother Léonor—who, like Augustin, was trained as a civil engineer but, unlike Augustin, had a strong aptitude for management. Léonor entered the service of the Lighthouse Commission in 1825, and went on to succeed Augustin as Secretary.Levitt, 2013, pp. 28, 72, 99.