How the ray gun got its zap: odd excursions into optics

I. History

Ancient Optics : Magnification Without Lenses

The Solar Weapon of Archimedes

Claudius Ptolemy's Law of Refraction

Antonio de Ulloa's Mystery

The Miracle of St. Gascoigne

Rays of the Sun

Roy G. Biv

George Christoph Lichtenberg

Hopkinson's Silk Handkerchief

First Light : Thomas Melville and the Beginnings of Spectroscopy

Mediocrity and Illumination

Even If You Can't Draw a Straight Line

A Sea Change

Thomas Pearsall and the Ultraviolet

If at First You Don't Succeed

More than a Burner

Apply Light Pressure

Sound Movies, the World's Fair, and Stellar Spectroscopy

Déjà vu

The Magic Lantern of Omar Khayyam

II. Weird Science

The Yellow Sun Paradox

Once in a Blue Moon

Chromatic Dispersions

The Eye in the Spiral

Retroreflectors

Yes, I Was Right! It Is Obvious!

Edible Lasers

Pyrotechnic Lasers

Defunct Lasers

The Phantom Laser

The Case of the Oily Mirrors; A Locked Room Mystery

Pinhole Glasses

Undulations

III. Pop Culture

This is Your Cat on Lasers

Dord

Zap!

Mystic Cameras

Playing With Light

I Must Find That Tractor Beam

The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Starbow

Diamonds in the Dark

A Popular History of the Laser

Pop Culture Errors in Optics

Pop Spectrum

The Telephote

Afterword.