From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 11:56:44 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 09/07/2026 05:43, rbowman wrote:

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 01:18:58 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

Even that was a massive improvement. ', and if so, how fast it
was -- a million times faster than sound? A million million?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

Interesting, but nowhere on that page is the speed of light mentioned...

In the Refraction heading:

"He stated that light possesses a finite speed that changes depending on
the material medium, and he argued that light propagates along the path
that is "easier and quicker."

He didn't address the actual speed but did say it wasn't instantaneous. Fresnel was still playing around with refraction centuries later.

The discussion of light goes back to the pre-Socratic Greeks. The
citation was in response to Lawrence's 'Before that, people had no idea
whether light was infinite or just very fast.

People did have definite ideas. After all 'photon' was derived from
'phôs'.

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