optical glass

noun

: flint or crown glass of well-defined characteristics used especially for making lenses

Examples of optical glass in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Its researchers, engineers, and technicians had designed gunsight lenses for fighter planes in World War I. Before World War I, the best-quality optical glass came from Germany, and other nations regarded its creation as a trade secret, leading the US to engineer its industry on its own. Kelsey D. Atherton, Popular Science, 20 July 2023 More lucrative was the manufacture of optical glass for telescopes and searchlights. IEEE Spectrum, 31 May 2019 Nearby, studio assistants maneuvered a large device that looked as if it had been designed by da Vinci or Galileo, and attempted to catch sunlight in a prism of optical glass, to project a rainbow on a canvas (which Sugimoto photographed). Emma Allen, The New Yorker, 12 Dec. 2022 The box is basically a set of prisms made from high-quality optical glass that bend light around any object in the enclosure around which the prisms are arrayed, the researchers describe in a paper posted on the online repository arXiv. Philip Ball, Scientific American, 11 June 2013 The lens ball is made from optical glass and goes through multiple quality checks to ensure your pictures remain flawless. Popular Science, 23 Oct. 2019 By the 1960s, the company was known less for military-grade optical glass than for its aspirational cool, thanks to such models as the Balorama, made famous by Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character. Bloomberg, Fortune, 16 June 2018 New types of optical glass developed for their microscopes also led the company to branch out into telescopes, projectors, binoculars, and photographic lenses. Allain Daigle, The Atlantic, 13 May 2018 The site includes a collection of structures set among gardens — an art gallery, a stage made of optical glass, a simple tea house, several historic gates. Mary Louise Schumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 27 Apr. 2018

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'optical glass.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1797, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of optical glass was in 1797

Dictionary Entries Near optical glass

Cite this Entry

“Optical glass.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/optical%20glass. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

Medical Definition

optical glass

noun
: flint or crown glass of well-defined characteristics used especially for making lenses
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!