The development of optical glass is inseparable from the development of optical instrument. The new reform of optical system often puts forward new requirements to optical glass, thus promoting the development of optical glass. Similarly, the successful production of new varieties of glass also tends to promote the development of optical instruments in turn.

The earliest people used to make optical materials optical parts is natural crystal, crystal lens for allegedly ancient Assyrian, in ancient times Chinese is the application of natural tourmaline (Chajing) and Huang Shuijing. Archaeologists have shown that glass can be made in Egypt and in the Warring States period three thousand bc. But glass as glasses and mirrors began in Venice in thirteenth Century. Since then, with the development of astronomy and navigation, Galileo, Newton and Descartes have also made telescopes and microscopes in glass. Since sixteenth Century, glass has become the main material for making optical parts.

optical glass

By seventeenth Century, the achromatic system of optical systems became the central problem of optical instruments. At this time, due to the improvement of the glass composition, the introduction of lead oxide in glass, Hull in 1729 to obtain the first achromatic lens, since then, optical glass is divided into crown and flint glass two broad categories.