HISTORY OF DESCRIPTION OF THE LAW OF REFRACTION OF THE LIGHT

Abstract

The authors demonstrate that the fundamental law of refraction of the light passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media was discovered in 1621 by Dutch astronomer Willebrord Snellius who, in their opinion, treated the experimental data of ancient Roman-Greek scientist Claudius Ptolemaeus, who discovered it in 140. (According to more accepted version the law is named Snell’s law or the Snell–Descartes law, René Descartes independently derived the law and described it in his 1637 treatise Discourse on Method – editor note). Modern processes in fiber-optic communication lines are based on that law. The authors argue that it is possible to use it to transmit digital and analog and pulse signals as well, but clipped speech transmission is most efficient from the point of view of frequency efficiency, and taking into account that there is no reduction in interference immunity.