T3D Re: From Euclid to Wheatstone and further on

[abram klooswyk <abram.klooswyk@xxxxxx>]

Peter Muyzers wrote (21 Oct 1998, PHOTO-3D Digest 3033):

>(...) Wheatstone, I believe stereo drawings were made before his time.
> Isn't it acceptable the technique might had been lost - as many
>traditions and other techniques - without being properly documented? 
>(...)

No, that's impossible in my opinion. 
What 'technique' this is? Making four scratches or punching some dots 
can hardly be called a 'technique', it is about the *concept*. 
But making two perspective projections and fusing them was not 
*conceivable* before the 18th century. 

Auenbrugger tells that he discovered lung (chest) percussion (1761) 
after he learned that wine farmers judged the amount of wine in their 
barrels by knocking on the vessel. Then he did the same on human chests.
[You can repeat this on yourself, place one index finger between two 
ribs to the left of your heart and knock with the other index finger 
on it, then place the first finger more to the right, over your heart, 
and knock again. You will notice the different pitch. In this way you 
can find the left border of your heart.(Women should do this supine)]

The point is that comparing the chest of a living human to a wine 
barrel would have been heresy in the middle ages, really unthinkable. 
It took *some time* before the body was seen as a mechanical device.

Stereoscopy essentially is based on the fact that it became accepted
to reduce the warm, living human being, who percepted the world with
his soul, to a viewing machine, composed of chemicals, which extracts 
information from two images with different projections. This is a 
little overstating it, but it probably makes more clear what I mean.

Abram Klooswyk


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