2006-08-02 03:59:50 · 6 answers · asked by HomePerson 2 in Education & Reference ➔ Trivia
A mirror is manufactured. It is a refined version of a highly polished flat piece of metal, probably copper, used by the ancients. The first famous account of a someone looking at his reflection in a pond is Narcissus in Greek mythology.
2006-08-02 19:14:34 · answer #1 · answered by tichur 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Water probably spurred the idea. It is a natural mirror.
I won't bother researching it, you can do that yourself, but you might find it interesting that heavy liquids are used in the biggest mirrors we have. Some space telescopes use, I believe, a pool of liquid mercury. They spin it around to make a parabolic shape that focuses the light like any solid mirror.
The best mirrors are hard to make. For telescopes they need to be big and perfect.
By using the liquid, they are able to build bigger mirrors cheaper, and actually change the focus by spinning it faster or slower.
Pretty cool. :). I know it wasnt what you are asking exactly, but interesting nonetheless!
2006-08-02 11:09:42 · answer #2 · answered by Jeremy D 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Very little is known about who invented each kind of mirror (metal mirror first, then glass mirrors, ...). At some point, some documents say that someone is making a given type of mirror, but the document does not tell us since when or who invented it.
The history of mirrors is here:
http://vision2form.nl/mirror_history.html.
2006-08-02 11:10:41 · answer #3 · answered by bloo435 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You just paint the back of glass silver and then paint black on top of the silver to make sure it's completely opaque. People just polished up metal before that.
2006-08-02 11:04:45 · answer #4 · answered by Molly 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
they were created... its a piece of glass with a metal backing on it
2006-08-02 11:03:13 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
created i believe....idonno by who tho....
2006-08-02 11:03:00 · answer #6 · answered by bugojanka69 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋