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Lens   /lɛnz/   Listen
noun
Lens  n.  (pl. lenses)  (Opt.) A piece of glass, or other transparent substance, ground with two opposite regular surfaces, either both curved, or one curved and the other plane, and commonly used, either singly or combined, in optical instruments, for changing the direction of rays of light, and thus magnifying objects, or otherwise modifying vision. In practice, the curved surfaces are usually spherical, though rarely cylindrical, or of some other figure. Lenses Note: Of spherical lenses, there are six varieties, as shown in section in the figures herewith given: viz., a plano-concave; b double-concave; c plano-convex; d double-convex; e converging concavo-convex, or converging meniscus; f diverging concavo-convex, or diverging meniscus.
Crossed lens (Opt.), a double-convex lens with one radius equal to six times the other.
Crystalline lens. (Anat.) See Eye.
Fresnel lens (Opt.), a compound lens formed by placing around a central convex lens rings of glass so curved as to have the same focus; used, especially in lighthouses, for concentrating light in a particular direction; so called from the inventor.
Multiplying lens or Multiplying glass (Opt.), a lens one side of which is plane and the other convex, but made up of a number of plane faces inclined to one another, each of which presents a separate image of the object viewed through it, so that the object is, as it were, multiplied.
Polyzonal lens. See Polyzonal.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lens" Quotes from Famous Books



... richest land showiest attire among the general body of the spectators, and flirting and love-making are part of the order of the day. A very crude form of field-glass or "spy-glass" was already in use, apparently consisting generally of a mere hollow tube, but occasionally provided with a magnifying lens. Nero himself, in consequence of his short-sight, had a "glass" in some way ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... grass that grow unheeded by the roadside; there are hundreds of them at your feet so much alike that the one you chose had no identity, whatever, until you had, by chance or design, separated it from the rest. Bear it away to your home and place it under a powerful lens; is it still the same uninteresting blade it was a moment ago out in the noisy and crowded thoroughfare? Why does your gaze become riveted upon what is revealed? Ah! you discern that such homely things ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... approached, and I smiled to see that the spectacles astride his handsome nose were minus one lens. He seemed half blind and wholly bewildered. I looked at once for the lost glass, and there it lay shining at me from the very spot where he had been so industriously peering. He laughed grimly as I handed it to him, fitted his treasure into its wonted rim, took out his watch, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... torches of lighthouses, multitudes of birds are annually killed by striking against lighthouse towers in thick, foggy weather. The keeper of the Cape Hatteras light once showed me a chipped place in the lens which he said had been made by the bill of a great white Gannet which one thick night crashed through the outer protecting glass of the lighthouse lamp. As many as seven hundred birds in one month have killed themselves ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... shaped somewhat like those of a humming-bird, which, as is well known, can, at times, vibrate its wings with such velocity that the most rapid camera lens cannot quite catch. ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton


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