Photometria

Photometria is a book on the measurement of light by Johann Heinrich Lambert published in 1760. It established a complete system of photometric quantities and principles; using them to measure the optical properties of materials, quantify aspects of vision, and calculate illumination.

Written in Latin, the title of the book is a word Lambert devised from the Greek: φῶς, φωτς (transliterated phôs, photos) = light and μετρια (transliterated metria) = measure. Lambert’s word has found its way into European languages as photometry, photometrie, fotometria. Photometria was the first work to accurately identify most fundamental photometric concepts, to assemble them into a coherent system of photometric quantities, to define these quantities with a precision sufficient for mathematical statement, and to build from them a system of photometric principles. These concepts, quantities, and principles are still in use today.

Lambert began with two simple axioms: light travels in a straight line in a uniform medium and rays that cross do not interact. Like Kepler before him, he recognized that "laws" of photometry are simply consequences and follow directly from these two assumptions. In this way Photometria demonstrated (rather than assumed) that

In addition, Lambert postulated a surface that emits light (either as a source or by reflection) in a way such that the density of emitted light (luminous intensity) varies as the cosine of the angle measured from the surface perpendicular. In the case of a reflecting surface, this form of emission is assumed to be the case, regardless of the light's incident direction. Such surfaces are now referred to as "Perfectly Diffuse" or "Lambertian". See: Lambertian reflectance, Lambertian emitter

Lambert demonstrated these principles in the only way available at the time: by contriving often ingenious optical arrangements that could make two immediately adjacent luminous fields appear equally bright (something that could only be determined by visual observation), when two physical quantities that produced the two fields were unequal by some specific amount (things that could be directly measured, such as angle or distance). In this way, Lambert quantified purely visual properties (such as luminous power, illumination, transparency, reflectivity) by relating them to physical parameters (such as distance, angle, radiant power, and color). Today, this is known as "visual photometry." Lambert was among the first to accompany experimental measurements with estimates of uncertainties based on a theory of errors and what he experimentally determined as the limits of visual assessment.

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