v. [f. FOCAL a. + -IZE.]
1. trans. To bring (rays of light, heat, etc.) to a focal point (or focus); to focus.
1845. De Quincey, Nat. Temp. Movem., Wks. 1863, XI. 170. Feeling is diffused over the whole surface of the body; light is focalised in the eye, sound in the ear.
c. 1865. J. Wylde, in Circ. Sc., I. 29/2. Heat can not only be refracted by a prism of rock-salt; but if a lens is made of that material, the rays of heat may be collected and focalised, and their effect made evident by receiving them on the thermo-multiplier, although they may be unaccompanied by light.
fig. 1860. T. Martin, Horace, Introd., p. xxvi. The verses, which charmed their fancy or delighted their ear in youth, became the counsellors of their manhood, or the mirror which focalizes for their old age the gathered wisdom of a lifetime.
1865. Lond. Rev., 9 Dec., 609/1. At the various central offices, the information … can be focalized.
2. To adjust or arrange the focus of (the eye); also absol. and refl. (of the eye).
1878. trans. Ziemssen’s Cycl. Pract. Med., XVII. 668. The supposed amaurosis of many observers is only apparent, and is the result of the loss of the power of focalizing.
1886. W. F. Warren, Moral Purity, in Homilet. Rev. (U.S.), XI. Jan., 54/1. We see at first simply ourselves, but, gradually focalizing our eyes for remoter objects, we begin to perceive the things which lie beneath and beyond the shining surface on which our lineaments were pictured. Ibid. As often as that old image of your own worthless, and worse than worthless self, swims into your field of vision, it is a proof that your eye, even if rightly directed, is focalizing itself upon the wrong object, focalizing itself upon a shadow, not upon the luminous Face, not upon the heart of God.
Hence Focalizing vol. sb. and ppl. a. Also Focalization, the action of focalizing.
1871. Morley, Voltaire iii. (1872), 119. That Voltaire does not use these focalising words and turns of composition only means that to him thought was less complex than it is to a more subjective generation.
1883. J. Millington, Are we to read backwards? 71. Spectacles … restoring to the eye its former focalizing power.
1887. Scientific American, N. S., LVI. 23 April, 261/2. Focalization in the eye was accomplished by a most wonderful condition, that of flexibility in the crystalline lens.
1893. Chicago Advance, 24 Aug. Such a focalization of all-around information on any one subject has rarely ever been witnessed.
