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Yeah, if I want the final word on lens technology, I ask a palaeontologist.

Heh! Funny.

Agreed, paleo's aren't usually experts on lens technology and should probably stick to providing the props for the evolutionist's just-so stories. Eldredge, on the other hand, apparantly devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye.

I got the quote from here (the link I provided earlier):

Link

Niles Eldredge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History (and a scientist who devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye), remarked:

These lenses—technically termed aspherical, aplanatic lenses—optimize both light collecting and image formation better than any lens ever conceived. We can be justifiably amazed that these trilobites, very early in the history of life on Earth, hit upon the best possible lens design that optical physics has ever been able to formulate (as quoted in Ellis, 2001, p. 49, emp. added).

The trilobite lenses are doublets. Doublets can in principle eliminate spherical aberration at one color only. A good modern lens will have three or more elements, made from glasses with different dependences of refractive index on wavelength, so as to be apochromatic - having no spherical aberration at any wavelength. While it is interesting that trilobites (and several later species) evolved the first step in building a achromatic lens, human technology was well past this stage by 1930.

People ought to be careful about superlatives, particularly when they're talking about stuff outside their field. Any amateur astronomer knows enough about lenses to be able to contradict Eldridge's statement, assuming he made it.

And there's no excuse for McIntosh; he should know enough to consult the primary literature, and not rely on websites, particularly those with a point of view.