Tech Story #10 · Golden Age G3: Ibn al-Haytham — light, the eye and the camera

Your phone camera began in a dark room — about 1,000 years ago! 📷🕯️

👁️ The old idea (Euclid, Ptolemy): your eyes shoot out rays, like torches.
💡 About 1011–1021, Ibn al-Haytham (Basra → Cairo) wrote the Book of Optics and said NO: light comes INTO the eye.
🕳️ Make a tiny hole in a dark room (a "camera obscura") and the world outside appears on the wall — upside down!
🧪 How did he prove it? Experiments — test, measure, repeat, again and again. He was one of the first to insist on it.
📱 Your phone camera works the same way: a lens instead of the hole, a sensor instead of the wall (the chip flips the picture).