[Treatise on Light by Christiaan Huygens]@TWC D-Link book
Treatise on Light

CHAPTER VI
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Therefore the whole line AH will represent the time along AD, DB.

Similarly the line AC or AF will represent the time along AC; and FH being by construction equal to 3/2 of CB, it will represent the time along CB in the medium; and in consequence the whole line AH will represent also the time along AC, CB.

Whence it appears that the time along AC, CB, is equal to the time along AD, DB.

And similarly it can be shown if L and K are other points in the curve CDE, that the times along AL, LB, and along AK, KB, are always represented by the line AH, and therefore equal to the said time along AD, DB.
In order to show further that the surfaces, which these curves will generate by revolution, will direct all the rays which reach them from the point A in such wise that they tend towards B, let there be supposed a point K in the curve, farther from D than C is, but such that the straight line AK falls from outside upon the curve which serves for the refraction; and from the centre B let the arc KS be described, cutting BD at S, and the straight line CB at R; and from the centre A describe the arc DN meeting AK at N.
Since the sums of the times along AK, KB, and along AC, CB are equal, if from the former sum one deducts the time along KB, and if from the other one deducts the time along RB, there will remain the time along AK as equal to the time along the two parts AC, CR.

Consequently in the time that the light has come along AK it will also have come along AC and will in addition have made, in the medium from the centre C, a partial spherical wave, having a semi-diameter equal to CR.


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