Solar Energy History
Early History
7th Century B.C.
Magnifying glass used to concentrate sun’s rays to make fire and to burn ants. Greeks and 3rd Century B.C. Romans use burning mirrors to light torches for religious purposes.
2nd Century B.C.
As early as 212 BC, the Greek scientist, Archimedes, used the reflective properties of bronze shields to focus sunlight and to set fire to wooden ships from the Roman Empire which were besieging Syracuse. (Although no proof of such a feat exists, the Greek navy recreated the experiment in 1973 and successfully set fire to a wooden boat at a distance of 50 meters.)
On Burning Mirrors. Diocles flourished in Greece just after 200 BC. He was a mathematician -- a geometer. Most of what we knew of Diocles came from reference to his work by a noted 6th-century mathematician.
the burning-mirror surface submitted to you is the surface bounding the figure produced by a section of a ... cone ... revolved about [its axis].
Diocles also studies the problem of finding a mirror such that the envelope of reflected rays is a given caustic curve or of finding a mirror such that the focus traces a given curve as the Sun moves across the sky.
