Copyright: Mus茅es de la Communaut茅 d鈥橝gglom茅ration du Niortais / Renaud Berthrand
The electromagnetic theory of light defines a light beam as an electric field whose components are in a plane perpendicular to the direction in which the beam travels. The Soleil compensator is an optical component, a quartz wedge compensator, that extends the optical path of one component of the electric field to another. This invention considerably simplified the design of instruments.