T3D Re: From Euclid to Wheatstone

[Peter Homer <P.J.Homer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>On 26 Sep 1998, TECH-3D Digest 367 Abram Klooswyk wrote

>>But there is no record of awareness of binocular depth perception
>>before Leonardo da Vinci, and even he made no stereo pictures.

 Which he has just quoted himself in his last post. I must have missed this
line the first times around because actualy it is just possible that Da
Vinci produced some accidental stereo pairs. This is because he drew a
diagram of a kind of double camera obscura with two pinholes in the same
body with no septum but wide enough apart for the images to be seperate
according to the rays drawn in the diagram. Actualy the pinholes are
slightly off centre and as a result some of the rays are drawn correctly as
falling on the side as well as the back of the box . This suggests that the
drawing was from a real device which was not that well made . Although he
understood that there was a difference between the views of the two eyes at
some point in his life. He seemed to regard the images from multiple
pinholes as identical and used them to illustrate the the way light from
objects traveled in all directions. Camera Obscura have been used as
drawing aids by artists, did Da Vinci ever use his stereo version as such
perhaps to further illustrate the point he was trying to make ?. I dont
know of any examples but if such pairs exist they could now be viewed
stereoscopicaly although almost certainly Da Vinci would never have done
so.   P.J.Homer



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