P3D Re: From Euclid to Wheatstone and further on

["William J. Carter, Ph.D." <wc@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:20 AM 10/20/98 -0600, Abram Klooswyk wrote, in a most intriguing post:

>Since ancient times visual *distance* and *depth* perception also were 
>studied, but except for Leonardo da Vinci nobody wrote anything on 
>*binocular* depth perception. A few hints to it are recorded in the 
>18th century, but the great step forward came only with Wheatstone.
<snip>
>Some say there were no stereodrawings before Wheatstone because the
>Stereoscope was not invented, so a merely technical cause. This is
>unlikely because: 
>1. Wheatstone made stereodrawings before he made a stereoscope, and 
>   he describes freeviewing, crossed and uncrossed, and aids for it.

As a possible argument to '1' above, in "La Vision parfaite", written in
1677 by the Capuchin friar, le pere Cherubin, there is a discussion and
construction diagram of Cherubin stereoscopic microscope. Wheatstone knew of
this seventeenth-century microscope, for he described it in "Transactions of
the Microscopal Society" (1853, I, 99-102).


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