Importance

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Abstract

The invention concerns a method of making a segmented mirror, the mirror comprising, in combination (a) a myriad of surfaces carried by a support, certain of said surfaces dimensionally offset from one another in a common direction generally parallel to the general direction of incident radiation to reflected, said surfaces being radiation reflecting surfaces each oriented in such a way that as a group they collectively reflect radiation essentially as they were a continuous reflecting surface, (b) each of said surfaces having a periphery comprising an irregular or repeating series of line segments which are connected, curved or linear, the peripheries of said surfaces, when projected in said common offset direction onto a plane perpendicular thereto, contiguously conforming to one another, said method including providing a die, used for casting the mirror segmented surface and constructing the die from a casting of a continuous surface of the desired shaped by cutting said casting, or a casting thereof, into small segments, and the segment cross sections being of any outline except circular, in order that the segments may be translated with respect to contiguous segments while maintaining integrity of the composite reflection of all the translated surfaces. The invention also concerns a mirror having multiple interfitting segments which are wavy edged.

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First Claim