Abstract
IN his letter in NATURE of Oct. 27, Mr. T. Smith repeats in a slightly different form the matter contained in my letter in the issue of Oct. 13. If the wave-length were infinitesimal the geometric theory would be correct. With a finite wave-length it ‘pays,’ so far as definition is concerned, to reduce the lens aperture until the ‘spurious disc’ and the ‘circle’ of confusion due to part of the image being out of focus are of the same order. Airy's work relating to the ‘spurious disc’ is contained in a paper entitled “On the Intensity of Light in the Neighbourhood of a Caustic”. This I read in 1871. In reference to the same subject, the late Lord Rayleigh quotes Verdet's “Leçons d'optique”. This I have not seen.
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MALLOCK, A. The Depth of Field and Resolving Power of Optical Instruments. Nature 122, 685 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122685c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122685c0
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