History of optical theory of reflecting telescopes and implications for future projects

This contribution, The History of Optical Theory of Reflecting Telescopes and Implications for Future Projects, is a shortened form of the Karl Schwarzschild lecture given in Bochum in September 1993. Some material has been added from an invited paper given in Padua in December 1992. For a full account, with figures and tables, the reader is referred to these two papers.© (1997) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.