FRESHWATER, a watering place in the Isle of Wight, England, 12 m. W. by S. of Newport by rail. Pop.(1901) 3306. It is a scattered township lying on the peninsula west of the river Var, which forms the western extremity of the island. The portion known as Freshwater Gate fronts the English Channel from the strip of low-lying coast interposed between the cliffs of the peninsula and those of the main part of the island. The peninsula rises to 397 ft. in Headon Hill, and the cliffs are magnificent. The western promontory is flanked on the north by the picturesque Alum Bay, and the lofty detached rocks known as the Needles lie off it. Farringford House in the parish was for some time the home of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who is commemorated by a tablet in All Saints’ church and by a great cross on the high downs above the town. There are golf links on the downs.
FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN (1788-1827), French physicist, the son of an architect, was born at Broglie (Eure) on the 10th of May 1788. His early progress in learning was slow, and when eight years old he was still unable to read. At the age of thirteen he entered the École Centrale in Caen, and at sixteen and a half the École Polytechnique, where he acquitted himself with distinction. Thence he went to the École des Ponts et Chaussées. He served as an engineer successively in the departments of Vendée, Drôme and Ille-et-Villaine; but his espousal of the cause of the Bourbons in 1814 occasioned, on Napoleon’s reaccession to power, the loss of his appointment. On the second restoration he obtained a post as engineer in Paris, where much of his life from that time was spent. His researches in optics, continued until his death, appear to have been begun about the year 1814, when he prepared a paper on the aberration of light, which, however, was not published. In 1818 he read a memoir on diffraction for which in the ensuing year he received the prize of the Académie des Sciences at Paris. He was in 1823 unanimously elected a member of the academy, and in 1825 he became a member of the Royal Society of London, which in 1827, at the time of his last illness, awarded him the Rumford medal. In 1819 he was nominated a commissioner of lighthouses, for which he was the first to construct compound lenses as substitutes for mirrors. He died of consumption at Ville-d’Avray, near Paris, on the 14th of July 1827.
The undulatory theory of light, first founded upon experimental demonstration by Thomas Young, was extended to a large class of optical phenomena, and permanently established by his brilliant discoveries and mathematical deductions. By the use of two plane mirrors of metal, forming with each other an angle of nearly 180°, he avoided the diffraction caused in the experiment of F. M. Grimaldi (1618-1663) on interference by the employment of apertures for the transmission of the light, and was thus enabled in the most conclusive manner to account for the phenomena of interference in accordance with the undulatory theory. With D. F. J. Arago he studied the laws of the interference of polarized rays. Circularly polarized light he obtained by means of a rhomb of glass, known as “Fresnel’s rhomb,” having obtuse angles of 126°, and acute angles of 54°. His labours in the cause of optical science received during his lifetime only scant public recognition, and some of his papers were not printed by the Académie des Sciences till many years after his decease. But, as he wrote to Young in 1824, in him “that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory” had been blunted. “All the compliments,” he says, “that I have received from Arago, Laplace and Biot never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery of a theoretic truth, or the confirmation of a calculation by experiment.”
See Duleau, “Notice sur Fresnel,” Revue ency. t. xxxix.; Arago, Œuvres complètes, t. i.; and Dr G. Peacock, Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Young, vol. i.
FRESNILLO, a town of the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, 37 m. N.W. of the city of Zacatecas on a branch of the Santiago river. Pop. (1900) 6309. It stands on a fertile plain between the Santa Cruz and Zacatecas ranges, about 7700 ft. above sea-level, has a temperate climate, and is surrounded by an agricultural district producing Indian corn and wheat. It is a clean, well-built town, whose chief distinction is its school of mines founded in 1853. Fresnillo has large amalgam works for the reduction of silver ores. Its silver mines, located in the neighbouring Proaño hill, were discovered in 1569, and were for a time among the most productive in Mexico. Since 1833, when their richest deposits were reached, the output has greatly decreased. There is a station near on the Mexican Central railway.
FRESNO, a city and the county-seat of Fresno county, California, U.S.A., situated in the San Joaquin valley (altitude about 300 ft.) near the geographical centre of the state. Pop. (1880) 1112; (1890) 10,818; (1900) 12,470, of whom 3299 were foreign-born and 1279 were Asiatics; (1910 census) 24,892. The city is served by the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé railways. The county is mainly a vast expanse of naturally arid plains and mountains. The valley is the scene of an extensive irrigation system, water being brought (first in 1872-1876) from King’s river, 20 m. distant; in 1905 500 sq. m. were irrigated. Fresno is in a rich farming country, producing grains and fruit, and is the only place in America where Smyrna figs have been grown with success; it is the centre of the finest raisin country of the state, and has extensive vineyards and wine-making establishments. The city’s principal manufacture is preserved (dried) fruits, particularly raisins; the value of the fruits thus preserved in 1905 was $6,942,440, being 70.5% of the total value of the factory product in that year ($9,849,001). In 1900-1905 the factory product increased 257.9%, a ratio of increase greater than that of any other city in the state. In the mountains, lumbering and mining are important industries; lumber is carried from Shaver in the mountains to Clovis on the plains by a V-shaped flume 42 m. long, the waste water from which is ditched for irrigation. The petroleum field of the county is one of the richest in California. Fresno is the business and shipping centre of its county and of the surrounding region. The county was organized in 1856. In 1872 the railway went through, and Fresno was laid out and incorporated. It became the county-seat in 1874 and was chartered as a city in 1885.