Question

brief history of mirror

Answer 1

The method of making flat panes of clear glass from blown cylinders began in Germany and evolved through the Middle Ages, until being perfected by the Venetians in the sixteenth century. ... The invention of the silvered-glass mirror is credited to German chemist Justus von Liebig in 1835.

Answer 2

The first mirrors used by humans were most likely pools of dark, still water, or water collected in a primitive vessel of some sort. The requirements for making a good mirror are a surface with a very high degree of flatness (preferably but not necessarily with high reflectivity), and a surface roughnesssmaller than the wavelength of the light. The earliest manufactured mirrors were pieces of polished stone such as obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Examples of obsidian mirrors found in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) have been dated to around 6000 B.C.[3] Mirrors of polished copper were crafted in Mesopotamia from 4000 B.C.,[3] and in ancient Egypt from around 3000 B.C.[4]Polished stone mirrors from Central and South America date from around 2000 B.C. onwards.[3] In China, bronze mirrors were manufactured from around 2000 B.C.,[5] some of the earliest bronze and copper examples being produced by the Qijia culture. Mirrors made of other metal mixtures (alloys) such as copper and tin speculum metal may have also been produced in China and India.[6] Mirrors of speculum metal or any precious metal were hard to produce and were only owned by the wealthy.[7] These stone and metal mirrors could be made in very large sizes, but were difficult to polish and get perfectly flat; a process that became more difficult with increased size; so they often produced warped or blurred images. Stone mirrors often had poor reflectivity compared to metals, yet metals scratch or tarnish easily, so they frequently needed polishing. Depending upon the color, both often yielded reflections with poor color rendering.[8] The poor image quality of ancient mirrors explains 1 Corinthians 13's reference to seeing "as in a mirror, darkly."

In her history of the mirror, Sabine Melchior-Bonnet draws significant attention to the relation of the mirror to Greek philosophy, specifically Socrates: