LENORMANT, FRANÇOIS (1837–1883), French Assyriologist and archaeologist, was born in Paris on the 17th of January 1837. His father, Charles Lenormant, distinguished as an archaeologist, numismatist and Egyptologist, was anxious that his son should follow in his steps. He made him begin Greek at the age of six, and the child responded so well to this precocious scheme of instruction, that when he was only fourteen an essay of his, on the Greek tablets found at Memphis, appeared in the Revue archéologique. In 1856 he won the numismatic prize of the Académie des Inscriptions with an essay entitled Classification des monnaies des Lagides. In 1862 he became sub-librarian of the Institute. In 1859 he accompanied his father on a journey of exploration to Greece, during which Charles Lenormant succumbed to fever at Athens (24th November). Lenormant returned to Greece three times during the next six years, and gave up all the time he could spare from his official work to archaeological research. These peaceful labours were rudely interrupted by the war of 1870, when Lenormant served with the army and was wounded in the siege of Paris. In 1874 he was appointed professor of archaeology at the National Library, and in the following year he collaborated with Baron de Witte in founding the Gazette archéologique. As early as 1867 he had turned his attention to Assyrian studies; he was among the first to recognize in the cuneiform inscriptions the existence of a non-Semitic language, now known as Accadian. Lenormant’s knowledge was of encyclopaedic extent, ranging over an immense number of subjects, and at the same time thorough, though somewhat lacking perhaps in the strict accuracy of the modern school. Most of his varied studies were directed towards tracing the origins of the two great civilizations of the ancient world, which were to be sought in Mesopotamia and on the shores of the Mediterranean. He had a perfect passion for exploration. Besides his early expeditions to Greece, he visited the south of Italy three times with this object, and it was while exploring in Calabria that he met with an accident which ended fatally in Paris on the 9th of December 1883, after a long illness. The amount and variety of Lenormant’s work is truly amazing when it is remembered that he died at the early age of forty-six. Probably the best known of his books are Les Origines de l’histoire d’après la Bible, and his ancient history of the East and account of Chaldean magic. For breadth of view, combined with extraordinary subtlety of intuition, he was probably unrivalled.
LENOX, a township of Berkshire county, Massachusetts,
U.S.A. Pop. (1900) 2942, (1905) 3058; (1910) 3060. Area,
19.2 sq. m. The principal village, also named Lenox (or Lenox-on-the-Heights),
lies about 2 m. W. of the Housatonic river,
at an altitude of about 1000 ft., and about it are high hills—Yokun
Seat (2080 ft.), South Mountain (1200 ft.), Bald Head
(1583 ft.), and Rattlesnake Hill (1540 ft.). New Lenox and
Lenoxdale are other villages in the township. Lenox is a fashionable
summer and autumn resort, much frequented by wealthy
people from Washington, Newport and New York. There are
innumerable lovely walks and drives in the surrounding region,
which contains some of the most beautiful country of the Berkshires—hills,
lakes, charming intervales and woods. As early
as 1835 Lenox began to attract summer residents. In the next
decade began the creation of large estates, although the great
holdings of the present day, and the villas scattered over the
hills, are comparatively recent features. The height of the
season is in the autumn, when there are horse-shows, golf, tennis,
hunts and other outdoor amusements. The Lenox library
(1855) contained about 20,000 volumes in 1908. Lenox was
settled about 1750, was included in Richmond township in 1765,
and became an independent township in 1767. The names were
those of Sir Charles Lennox, third duke of Richmond and of
Lennox (1735–1806), one of the staunch friends of the American
colonies during the War of Independence. Lenox was the county-seat
from 1787 to 1868. It has literary associations with
Catherine M. Sedgwick (1789–1867), who passed here the second
half of her life; with Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose brief residence
here (1850–1851) was marked by the production of the House
of the Seven Gables and the Wonder Book; with Fanny Kemble,
a summer resident from 1836–1853; and with Henry Ward
Beecher (see his Star Papers). Elizabeth (Mrs Charles) Sedgwick,
the sister-in-law of Catherine Sedgwick, maintained here from
1828 to 1864 a school for girls, in which Harriet Hosmer, the
sculptor, and Maria S. Cummins (1827–1866), the novelist,
were educated; and in Lenox academy (1803), a famous classical
school (now a public high school) were educated W. L. Yancey,
A. H. Stephens, Mark Hopkins and David Davis (1815–1886),
a circuit judge of Illinois from 1848 to 1862, a justice (1862–1877)
of the United States Supreme Court, a Republican member
of the United States Senate from Illinois in 1877–1883, and
president of the Senate from the 31st of October 1881, when
he succeeded Chester A. Arthur, until the 3rd of March 1883.
There is a statue commemorating General John Paterson (1744–1808)
a soldier from Lenox in the War of Independence.
See R. de W. Mallary, Lenox and the Berkshire Highlands (1902); J. C. Adams, Nature Studies in Berkshire; C. F. Warner, Picturesque Berkshire (1890); and Katherine M. Abbott, Old Paths and Legends of the New England Border (1907).
LENS, a town of Northern France, in the department of Pas-de-Calais,
13 m. N.N.E. of Arras by rail on the Déûle and on
the Lens canal. Pop. (1906) 27,692. Lens has important iron
and steel foundries, and engineering works and manufactories
of steel cables, and occupies a central position in the coalfields
of the department. Two and a half miles W.S.W. lies Liévin
(pop. 22,070), likewise a centre of the coalfield. In 1648 the
neighbourhood of Lens was the scene of a celebrated victory
gained by Louis II. of Bourbon, prince of Condé, over the
Spaniards.
LENS (from Lat. lens, lentil, on account of the similarity of the form of a lens to that of a lentil seed), in optics, an
instrument which refracts the luminous rays proceeding from
an object in such a manner as to produce an image of the object.
It may be regarded as having four principal functions: (1) to
produce an image larger than the object, as in the magnifying
glass, microscope, &c.; (2) to produce an image smaller than
the object, as in the ordinary photographic camera; (3) to convert
rays proceeding from a point or other luminous source
into a definite pencil, as in light-house lenses, the engraver’s
globe, &c.; (4) to collect luminous and heating rays into a
smaller area, as in the burning glass. A lens made up of two
or more lenses cemented together or very close to each other
is termed “composite” or “compound”; several lenses
arranged in succession at a distance from each other form a
“system of lenses,” and if the axes be collinear a “centred
system.” This article is concerned with the general theory
of lenses, and more particularly with spherical lenses. For
a special part of the theory of lenses see Aberration; the
instruments in which the lenses occur are treated under their
own headings.
The most important type of lens is the spherical lens, which is a piece of transparent material bounded by two spherical surfaces, the boundary at the edge being usually cylindrical or conical. The line joining the centres, C1, C2 (fig. 1), of the bounding surfaces is termed the axis; the points S1, S2, at which the axis intersects the surfaces, are termed the “vertices” of the lens; and the distance between the vertices is termed the “thickness.” If the edge be everywhere equidistant from the vertex, the lens is “centred.”
Fig. 1.
Although light is really a wave motion in the aether, it is only necessary, in the investigation of the optical properties of systems of lenses, to trace the rectilinear path of the waves, i.e. the direction of the normal to the wave front, and this can be done
