The first were proposed in 1935 by Maurice Paul.[1] The basic idea behind Paul's solution is that spherical mirrors, with an aperture stop at the centre of curvature, have only spherical aberration – no coma or astigmatism (but they do produce an image on a curved surface of half the radius of curvature of the spherical mirror). So if the spherical aberration can be corrected, a very wide field of view can be obtained. This is similar to the conventional Schmidt design, but the Schmidt does this with a refractive corrector plate instead of a third mirror.