Early Optics: 1400s - 1700s

Near the start of the 16th Century, the amazing artist, scientist, and inventor Leonardo da Vinci
sketched out diagrams and wrote instructions about the camera obscura. In these papers, he
included not just pinholes but also simple glass lenses.
 Photo by  Uriel Soberanes  on  Unsplash

Lenses and optics were a relatively new but established science by that time period, being used by
astronomers to broaden our knowledge of the universe. Interestingly for our history of photography
timeline, astronomers were also a driving force behind the advent of film.