KirtasBooks.com - Digitizing Books on Demand - Optical Research Associates

This collection was assembled between 1986 and 1999, in the days before the Internet, while traveling throughout the U.S. and in England, as part of my job as a consulting optical designer and Director of the Optical Engineering Group at Optical Research Associates. The books, necessarily restricted to those with a publication dates of 1921 or earlier, represent a broad collection of contributions to the historically significant, but niche field, of optical instrument design. This is a field that emerged in earnest about 1885 with collaboration of Abbe, Zeiss, and Schott in Germany. They form part of a larger collection when the post-1921 books are included. The collection itself is now at the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona.

The process began in 1983 when I visited the stacks at Yale University. I was looking to read directly the work of Coddington (1828) on the computation of astigmatism as my PhD work in the aberrations of optical systems without symmetry led to a reinterpretation of his work. In those days it was possible to get a stack pass, allowing free access to nearly every book in Yale’s collection – quite amazing. Because the library filing system is loosely by subject, I was immediately distracted by the books in the immediate vicinity and rapidly learned of the collection of a few hundred books in optics and optical design from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

In 1986 I decided to attempt to purchase a copy of Coddington on the open market and began frequenting scientific oriented books stores around the country and slowly became acquainted with the few dealers specializing in this field, including The Gemmary, in Redondo Beach and Glaser Books, in the Bay area. These two and J. Ptak, in Georgetown, represent the only three groups I found in this field. It rapidly became apparent that books in optics were scattered randomly throughout the country (and later the world) and I determined that my mission was to bring them together as I worked to find a copy of Coddington with the intention of donating them to the College of Optical Sciences. It took me nearly ten years to find a copy of Coddington and at that point I declared the mission a success and proceeded to make the donation to the University.

One of the most amazing facts I think is that I learned quickly that a good/rare optics book can be found in literally any used bookstore. I quickly developed a technique; in each new city or town, I would stay an extra day and “borrow” the pages out of the nearest phone book (remember phone booths?) and travel indiscriminately to every store listed, if possible. I easily visited over 100 cities/towns in nearly all of the 48 states. I think my favorite story surrounds the acquisition of Airy’s 1848 book from an unpainted, cement block 40’x30’ building filled with used paperback books in the desert outside Phoenix. After noting that I had found the only book that brought respectability to this establishment, the owner sold it to me for $8.50.

With the emergence of Kirtas Books, my wife, Jannick Rolland, the Brian J. Thompson (no relation) Chair Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester and I saw an opportunity to make this special collection of books available to the community as a whole; the original goal. Prof. Rolland and I (also now a Visiting Scientist at the University of Rochester) are excited as part of an evolving curriculum to stress the importance to the next generations of optical scientists and engineers of putting emerging science and engineering in context, and we envision that this collection will greatly facilitate that process. With a generous donation by Optical Research Associates, this collection has been brought on-line for all. Announced at the 2010 International Optics Design Conference, we are very excited with the success. There are many jewels in the collection and we encourage you to explore and experience and enjoy.

Kevin P. Thompson
Jannick P. Rolland
May, 2010