Abbas ibn Firnas

Born around 809 in Al-Andalus, Abbas ibn Firnas moved through multiple disciplines: astronomy, engineering, chemistry, medicine, music, poetry. He constructed a device that tracked planetary motion and developed a process for manufacturing colourless glass, then applied it to create reading stones — early magnifying lenses. Somewhere in those decades he also experimented with unpowered flight, a trial that became the detail history remembered. He died in 887, leaving behind the image of a mind that refused to stay in one field.