Re: Graphical Ray tracing on Hangar Floor


<mpate@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

I am looking for a photo that shows optical engineers in some of the
large hangars doing optical design of a bombsight?
The folklore goes that they were using chalk on a string to draw the
radii of the lenses and then using chalk snap line strings to make the
rays on the floor of the hangar. The reason is that a large scale ray
trace might have been more accurate and/or much quicker than looking up
angles in trig table books. This was of course pre computer and pre
calculator.

And how were the refractions performed w/o calculations?
Purely graphically by Huygens construction?
Not very accurate.




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