The early technology that led to the development of solar cookers was a large curved mirror, called a
burning mirror, that focused the Sun's rays on an object, causing it to burst into flames.
The
Burning Mirror is especially intriguing because the author is a Pakistani living in Scotland.
In On
Burning Mirrors, 1992, a fluid design that seems half art-nouveau and half Mayan is superimposed on a gray and turquoise ground like shot silk.
And where is the similarity between this [process] and
burning mirrors? Indeed, its burning point is far from the spot of the reflection of rays.
[Rather], heat occurs here from the reflection of light and air is heated by this process as can be observed in the [experiment of]
burning mirrors. And you must know that the rays are not bodies--for if they were bodies there would be two bodies in one place, [and by that] I mean the air and the rays--but attributes of a transparent body.