Maraldi, G.F. (1723). "Diverses expèriences d'optique" [Various optical experiments]. Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences ... Avec les Mémoires de Mathématique & de Physique (in French): 111–143. From p. 140: "La lumiere plus grande au milieu des boules plus petites, fait voir qu'elle circule en plus grande abondance & plus facilement autour des petites boules qu'autour des grandes." (More light in the middle of the smaller balls shows that it [i.e., light] spreads in greater abundance and more easily around small balls than around big [ones].) Fig. 8 on Plate 6 (following p. 142) shows light at the center of a ball's shadow (in the regime where the spot and its fringes cover most of the shadow).
Dauger, D.E. (November 1996), "Simulation and Study of Fresnel Diffraction for Arbitrary Two-Dimensional Apertures", Computers in Physics, 10 (6), AIOP: 591–604, Bibcode:1996ComPh..10..591D, doi:10.1063/1.168584
Ufimtsev, P.Ya. (1971). Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction. p. 46. ...[the field in the shadow] may be investigated as the sum of the spherical waves from two "luminous" points on the rim of the disk, [one being the] closest to the observation point [and the other] is the furthest from it.
Dauger, D.E. (November 1996), "Simulation and Study of Fresnel Diffraction for Arbitrary Two-Dimensional Apertures", Computers in Physics, 10 (6), AIOP: 591–604, Bibcode:1996ComPh..10..591D, doi:10.1063/1.168584
Arago (1819). "Rapport fait par M. Arago à l'Académie des Sciences, au nom de la Commission qui avait été chargée d'examiner les Mémoires envoyés au concours pour le prix de la diffraction" [Report made by Mr. Arago to the Academy of Sciences in the name of the commission which had been charged with examining the memoirs submitted to the competition for the diffraction prize.]. Annales de Chimie et de Physique. 2nd series (in French). 11: 5–30. From p. 16:"L'un de vos commissaires, M. Poisson, avait déduit des intégrales rapportées par l'auteur, le résultat singulier que le centre de l'ombre d'un écran circulaire opaque devait, lorsque les rayons y pénétraient sous des incidences peu obliques, être aussi éclairé que si l'écran n'existait pas. Cette conséquence a été soumise à l'épreuve d'une expérience directe, et l'observation a parfaitement confirmé le calcul (e)." (One of your commissioners, Mr. Poisson, had deduced from the integrals [that had been] reported by the author [i.e., Mr. Fresnel], the strange result that the center of the shadow of an opaque circular screen should — when the [light] rays penetrate it [i.e., the shadow] at slightly oblique incidences — also be illuminated as if the screen didn't exist. This result has been submitted to the test of a direct experiment, and observation has perfectly confirmed the calculation (e).)
