Abstract
It is a great pleasure for us, daily Fabry-Perot interferometer (hereafter referred to as FP) users, to pay homage to the genius inventors of the FP. Each day we are still bewildered by the power of this instrument which mainly consists of two pieces of half-silvered glass. Even if equations of physics are perfectly able to describe multiple-beam interferences (hereafter referred to as MBI), something magic remains in our mind.We will tackle this paper from a historical point of view. As any discovery, the invention of the FP did not occur just by chance from nowhere. As pointed out by Connes (1986) the invention of the multiple-beam interferometer may be understood as having proceeded from the fortunate convergence of two independent developments: (i) During 2 centuries, MBI has been observed and even computed but its specific and pregnant feature, the fringe sharpening, was not understood before Fabry’s thesis, (ii) A long production of mirrors, leading to the semi-transparent silver film.
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