Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest known lenses date back to 2000 BC and were discovered in Crete. These artifacts were crafted from polished quartz crystal and are housed in the Archaeological Museum of Heraclion.
The Persian mathematician Ibn Sahl wrote the treatise On burning mirrors and lenses in 984. He correctly described a law of refraction later known as Snell's law and designed the first aspheric lenses to eliminate spherical aberration.
The first working laser was demonstrated on the 16th of May 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories. This device was initially called a solution looking for a problem before becoming a multibillion-dollar industry.
The retina functions by focusing light onto a layer of photoreceptor cells called the retina which forms the inner lining of the back of the eye. There are two types of photoreceptor cells called rods and cones that are sensitive to different aspects of light.
The compound optical microscope was invented around 1595 in the Netherlands. It emerged from the spectacle making centers in the Netherlands alongside the refracting telescope in 1608.