The Giant and the Leprechaun

This is the story of one of the most magnificent Fresnel lenses ever proposed and the man who proposed it. The giant in our story is the giant lens proposed in 1892, and our leprechaun is the great Irish inventor John Richardson Wigham. This story deals with Wigham's composite gas burner, his proposal for the hyper-radial lens, and his later development of the giant lens and its associated intensity burner.