Table of Contents Introduction I. History 1.) Ancient Optics - Magnification Without Lenses 2.) The Solar Weapon of Archimedes 3.) Claudius Ptolemy's Law of Refraction 4.) Antonio de Ulloa's Mystery 5.) The Miracle of St. Gascoigne 6.

) Rays of the Sun 7.) Roy G. Biv 8.) George Christoph Lichtenberg 9.) Hopkinson's Silk Handkerchief 10.) First Light - Thomas Melville and the Beginnings of Spectroscopy 11.) Mediocrity and Illumination 12.) Even If You Can't Draw a Straight Line 13.

) A Sea Change 14.) Thomas Pearsall and the Ultraviolet 15.) If at First You Don't Succeed 16.) More than a Burner 17.) Apply Light Pressure 18.) Sound Movies, the World's Fair, and Stellar Spectroscopy 19.) Déjà vu 20.) The Magic Lantern of Omar Khayyam II.

Weird Science 21.) The Yellow Sun Paradox 22.) Once in a Blue Moon 23.) Chromatic Dispersions 24.) The Eye in the Spiral 25.) Retroreflectors 26.) Yes, I was Right! It is Obvious! 27.) Edible Lasers 28.

) Pyrotechnic Lasers 29.) Defunct Lasers 30.) The Phantom Laser 31.) The Case of the Oily Mirrors; A Locked Room mystery 32.) Pinhole Glasses 33.) Undulations III. Pop Culture 34.) This is Your Cat on Lasers 35.

) Dord 36.) Zap! 37.) Mystic Cameras 38.) Playing With Light 39.) I Must Find That Tractor Beam 40.) The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Starbow 41.) Diamonds in the Dark 42.) A Popular History of the Laser 43.

) Pop Culture Errors in Optics 44.) Pop Spectrum 45.) The Telephote Afterword.