Mankind’s early ideas about the speed of light, the Aether (supposed to fill the universe) and the instantaneous “action at a distance” theory, before the speed of light was first measured. Euclid’s work on optics, in which he used his theorems from geometry to explain what is seen, assuming that rays of vision were sent out by the eye. The discovery of refraction, explained by Snell’s law and its implications for the speed of light in the theories of Descartes and Fermat, and its importance in modern physics as a principle of least action. How the study of refraction, as when a light beam from a laser pointer bends on entering water, divided scientists for centuries into two groups, those who believed that light sped up on entering water and was a particle, and those who believed it slowed down and was a wave.