Phoenicians	1st  to discover glass
Assyrians	1st to record details of glass making
Roger Bacon & Salverino D'armante	Both are credited with the invention of spectacles.
Ben Franklin	Invented bifocals of which the optics have not been improved upon since.
Thomas Young	1801, discovered astigmatism.
Wollaston	1804, invented curved lenses which were called periscopic which had a base curve of +1.25 D or -1.25 D
Pierre-Luis Guinand	1807, developed high quality glass by using clay rods in the process of glass making.
Suscipi	Around 1840 invented toric lenses.
Felix Monoyer	Coined the term diopter.
Nagel	Devised the diopter standard of measurement.
Schott	Father of modern glass.  Started company in 1880.
Bausch & Lomb	Was started in 1915.  Produced 65% of the world's glass.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)	1st to attempt to measure the speed of light, but was unsuccesful.
Olaf Roemer	1875, calculated the speed of light by observing the moons of Jupiter.
Isaac Newton	Corpuscular theory of light.
Christian Huygens	Wave theory of light.