Cylindrical Lenses

CYLINDRICAL LENSES:

     Cylindrical Lenses are lenses that focuses light which passes through unto a line instead of a focused point such as the spherical lenses. The curved face of a cylindrical lens focuses the image unto an alignment in sync with the crossing of the surface of the lens, and also a flat surface perpendicular to it. The image is then compressed by the lens in a direction which is perpendicular to this line, remaining unchanged in the direction parallel to it. Lenses containing cylindrical characteristics can actually be used to correct astigmatism. For those of you who are unaware of exactly what astigmatism is. It having to be a defect inside of the eye or in a lens which might lead to distorted images. Unfortunately, this condition is actually caused by divergence from spherical degrees curving from a straight line.

USES OF CYLINDRICAL LENSES:

     As a result, of Cylindrical lenses being non-spherical lenses, they can effectively reduce traces of spherical aberration, along with chromatic aberration while rendering functions such as dimensional amplification. Taken advantage of on a fairly broad scale, cylindrical lenses can be used to perform a variety of important and common tasks including: linear detector lighting which is a alignment of lights in a straight line used to detect actions and events such as sudden movements (Often used in home security systems), scanning bar codes which is a common task for businesses like your local super market in order to perform inventory or check out customers, lighting holographic images like the ones you see projected on the sides of buildings or on a stage for entertainment, processing optical information which is information processed by the use of light, reading data on discs for computers, and emitting lasers, and more. Yet,most commonly used to change the sizes of images.

Please see optical design for more.