Lens Design Fundamentals

A large part of this book is devoted to a study of possible design procedures for various types of lens or mirror systems, with fully worked examples of each. The reader is urged to follow the logic of these examples and be sure that he understands what is happening, noticing particularly how each available degree of freedom is used to control one aberration. Not every type of lens has been considered, of course, but the design techniques illustrated here can readily be applied to the design of other more complex systems. It is assumed that the reader has access to a small computer to help with the ray tracing, otherwise he may find the computations so time-consuming that he is liable to lose track of what he is trying to accomplish.

Rudolf Kingslake (1903-2003) was a founding faculty member of the Institute of Optics at The University of Rochester (1929) and remained teaching until 1983. Concurrently, in 1937 he became head of the lens design department at Eastman Kodak until his retirement in 1969. Dr. Kingslake published numerous papers, books, and was awarded many patents. He was a Fellow of SPIE and OSA, and an OSA President (1947-48). He was awarded the Progress Medal from SMPTE (1978), the Frederic Ives Medal (1973), and the Gold Medal of SPIE (1980).