The attempts to understand the nature of light and the mechanism of vision date back to antiquity. However, the main efforts to define the foundations of theoretical optics did not begin until the seventeenth century, when microscopes and telescopes were gaining acceptance as essential instruments for scientific observation.

Kepler clarified some fundamental concepts of geometrical optics and presented a rigorous theory of optical instruments. Snell studied diffraction phenomena, which Descartes reduced to a precise mathematical law. The phenomenon of diffraction, already observed by Grimaldi, was studied by Hooke, who proposed a wave theory of light. Huygens regarded light as a disturbance of "ether," an impalpable medium composed of elastic particles capable of propagating impulses. The velocity of light—considered infinite for centuries—was estimated with good approximation by Römer in 1676. Newton, whose treatises remained fundamental for the development of eighteenth-century optics, decomposed sunlight into the colors of the spectrum by means of a prism.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, experimental optics was still relying on instruments of modest quality. Mirrors of various types, lenses, prisms, glass polyhedrons, adjustable slits, and diaphragms were often mounted on pedestals or pivoted on rudimentary optical benches. The quality of the glass itself still left much to be desired: it was often uneven, slightly colored, and filled with bubbles.