Great Facts: A Popular History and Description of the Most Remarkable Inventions During the Present CenturyBakewell, Frederick C. (Frederick Collier)
History
Great Facts: A Popular History and Description of the Most Remarkable Inventions During the Present Century
Bakewell, Frederick C. (Frederick Collier)
Inventions
One of the most interesting effects of the Stereoscope has been
recently produced by Mr. De la Rue, who has contrived the means of
giving apparent rotundity to the surface of the moon, as viewed
through a powerful telescope. The disc of the full moon, however
highly magnified, presents, as is well-known, the appearance of a flat
surface, with the lights and shadows marked seemingly on a plane.
Owing to the great distance of that luminary, there is no variation
in its appearance, whether it be looked at with one eye or with the
other, therefore it seems removed beyond the operation of the ordinary
cause of stereoscopic effects. Nevertheless, Mr. De la Rue has taken
photographs of the moon which, when placed in the Stereoscope, combine
to form a solid-looking globe, on which all the lights and shadows are
distinctly and beautifully delineated. He has produced this effect by
taking his photographs at different periods of the year, when there is
a slight variation in the direction of the moon's face to the earth;
and by combining these separate photographs into one image in the
Stereoscope, the form of the moon appears as convex as the surface of
an artificial globe.
[Illustration]
M. Claudet, who is one of the most successful photographers in
the metropolis, has contrived an arrangement which he calls a
"Stereomonoscope," by which the appearance of solidity is communicated
to a single image formed on a screen of ground glass. The screen of
ground glass has a black back, and is placed in the focus of a lens in
an ordinary camera obscura, wherein the image may be seen by looking
down upon it. The particles of the roughened glass reflect to each
eye different parts of the image focused on the screen, and by this
means a similar effect is produced as when two dissimilar pictures are
looked at through a stereoscope instrument. One great advantage of this
arrangement is that several persons may look at the image at the same
time.
Mr. John Sang, of Kirkaldy, has very recently imparted stereoscopic
effect to copies of paintings and engravings, the flat surfaces of
which were previously thought to defy any such application of the
Stereoscope. The means he employs of doing so are at present kept
secret, but he has shown its practicability by copying, on wood
engravings, Mr. George Cruikshank's series of "The Bottle." In some
respects this process seems almost more wonderful than the original
Stereoscope, for it gives solid form and apparent substantiality to the
mere creations of the artist's pencil.
THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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