The first description of multiple-prism arrays, and multiple-prism dispersion, was given by
Newton in his book
Opticks. Prism pair expanders were introduced by
Brewster in 1813. A modern mathematical description of the single-prism dispersion was given by
Born and
Wolf in 1959. The generalized multiple-prism dispersion theory was introduced by
Duarte and Piper in 1982.