Popular Scientific Recreations: in Natural Philosphy, Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, etc., etc., etc.Tissandier, Gaston
Science
Popular Scientific Recreations: in Natural Philosphy, Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, etc., etc., etc.
Tissandier, Gaston
Scientific recreations
We present here an apparatus based on a very different optical
arrangement. In the _Praxinoscope_[12] (a name given by the inventor,
Mr. Reynaud, to this new apparatus), the substitution of one object for
another is accomplished without interruption in the vision, or solution
of continuity, and consequently without a sensible reduction of light;
in a word, the eye beholds _continuously_ an image which, nevertheless,
is incessantly changing before it. The result was obtained in this
manner. Having sought unsuccessfully by mechanical means to substitute
one object for another without interrupting the continuity of the
spectacle, the inventor was seized with the idea of producing this
substitution, not with the objects themselves, but with their virtual
images. He then contrived the arrangement which we will now describe.
A plane mirror, AB (fig. 129), is placed at a certain distance from
an object, CD, and the virtual image will be seen at C′D′. If we then
turn the plane mirror and object towards the point, O, letting BE and
DF be their new positions, the image will be at C″D″. _Its axis_, O,
_will not be displaced_. In the positions, AB and CD, first occupied
by the plane mirror and the object, we now place another mirror and
object. Let us imagine the eye placed at M. Half of the first object
will be seen at OD″, and half of the second at OC′. If we continue
the rotation of the instrument, we shall soon have mirror No. 2 at
TT′, and object No. 2 at SS′. At the same moment the image of object
No. 2 will be seen entirely at C‴D″. Mirror No. 2 and its object will
soon after be at BE and DF. If we then imagine another mirror and its
corresponding object at AB and CD, the same succession of phenomena
will be reproduced. This experiment therefore shows that a series of
objects placed on the perimeter of a polygon will be seen successively
at the centre, if the plane mirrors are placed on a concentric polygon,
the “apothème” of which will be less by one-half, and which will be
carried on by the same movement. In its practical form, M. Reynaud’s
apparatus consists of a polygonal or simply circular box (fig. 128),
(for the polygon may be replaced by a circle without the principle or
result being changed), in the centre of which is placed a prism of
exactly half a diameter less, the surface of which is covered with
plane mirrors. A strip of cardboard bearing a number of designs of
the same object, portrayed in different phases of action, is placed
in the interior of the circular rim of the box, so that each position
corresponds to a plate of the glass prism. A moderate movement of
rotation given to the apparatus, which is raised on a central pivot,
suffices to produce the substitution of the figures, and the animated
object is reflected on the centre of the glass prism with remarkable
brightness, clearness, and delicacy of movement. Constructed in this
manner, the _Praxinoscope_ forms an optical toy both interesting and
amusing.
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