Zograscope
A zograscope is an optical device for magnifying flat pictures that has the property of enhancing the sense of the depth shown in the picture. It consists of a large magnifying lens. Devices containing only the lens are sometimes referred to as graphoscopes. Other models have the lens mounted on a stand in front of an angled mirror; this allows someone to look through the lens at the picture flat on the table. Pictures viewed in this way need to be left-right reversed. A print made for this purpose is called a vue perspective view. According to Michael Quinion, the origin of the term is lost, but it is known as a diagonal mirror, as an optical pillar machine, or as an optical diagonal machine. Zograscopes were popular during the half of the 18th century as parlour entertainments. Most existing ones from that time are fine furniture, with turned stands, brass fittings, fine finishes. In 1570, John Dee wrote A fruitfull Preface... specifying the chiefe Mathematicall Scieces, etc. in which he defined "zographie" as a mathematical art for representing visual images.
In 1677, German writer Johann Christoph Kohlhans described the effect of a convex lens in a camera obscura as if the subject appeared "naked before the eye in width, breadth and distance". In 1692, William Molyneux wrote in his Dioptrica Nova how "Pieces of Perspective appear Natural and strong through Convex Glasses duly apply'd". In 1730, the first zograscopes called "optiques", were developed in Paris. Many perspective views of scenes from France and Germany but some from England, were published. Optiques incorporated a mirror but lacked any simple means of varying the distance of the lens from the image. In 1745, the first English versions of the devices began to appear and soon many perspective views were printed for it of views with urban architecture; the oldest known reference to the English device is found in an advertisement in an English newspaper from April 1746. The term optical diagonal machine dates from as early as 1750. Zograscopes created an unprecedentedly realistic experience of depicted scenes, so much so that Blake described it as "virtual reality".
A zograscope allowed viewers to move their eyes over large scenes, yielding an immersive experience. Koenderink et al. showed that viewing photographs with a zograscope allowed observers to see depicted objects, such as Rodin's Danaid, in objectively measured depth. Magnification of images was well understood by the time the first devices were constructed in the early 18th century; the image is placed at the focal point of a biconvex or plano-convex lens allowing someone to view the magnified image at varying distances on the other side of the lens. Court and von Rorh suggested that the popularity of the early French models was because they allowed presbyopic purchasers to see the images despite the French fashion against wearing glasses, but Chaldecott doubted this could have been the sole reason for the devices' enduring popularity, leaving the major factor to be the realistic appearance of the depicted images. A zograscope makes a realistic experience for someone looking through it is by enhancing depth perception.
One way is by minimizing other depth cues that specify the flatness and pictorial nature of the picture. The image is magnified giving it a visual angle similar to the real scene the picture is depicting; the edges of the picture are blocked by the frame of the lens. The light coming from the lens to the eye is collimated. In early prints of interior scenes, some objects were hand-tinted with saturated colors whereas the background was tinted with "a pale wash" exploiting color contrast as a depth cue. A second way a zograscope could enhance depth perception is by creating binocular stereopsis; because each eye views the image from a different position, the surface of the picture could have binocular disparity from different magnification for the two eyes or from differences in the rotation of the images received by the eyes, so-called cyclodisparity. Such disparities create an overall slant of the picture surface around the vertical meridian or horizontal meridian respectively; as well, coloured parts of the image will be refracted differently for each eye, creating a version of chromostereopsis.
If the binocular disparity were incorrect for the surface of the image or any coloured parts of it, the stereoscopic information tends to integrate with the other depth information in the image. A simple zograscope can be built from a frame and placing in the frame a large, fresnel lens available from stationery stores; when this is placed over a computer monitor displaying a photograph of a natural scene, the depicted depth will be enhanced. Peep show Brightbytes.com Worldwidewords.org Georgianprints.co.uk
Magic lantern
The magic lantern known by its Latin name lanterna magica, is an early type of image projector employing pictures painted, printed or produced photographically on transparent plates, one or more lenses, a light source. It was developed in the 17th century and used for entertainment purposes, it was applied to educational purposes during the 19th century. Since the late 19th century smaller versions were mass-produced as a toy for children; the magic lantern was in wide use from the 18th century until the mid-20th century, when it was superseded by a compact version that could hold many 35 mm photographic slides: the slide projector. The magic lantern used a concave mirror in back of a light source to direct as much of the light as possible through a small rectangular sheet of glass—a "lantern slide"—on, the image to be projected, onward into a lens at the front of the apparatus; the lens was adjusted to optimally focus the plane of the slide at the distance of the projection screen, which could be a white wall, it therefore formed an enlarged image of the slide on the screen.
Some lanterns, including those of Christiaan Huygens and Jan van Musschenbroek, used 3 lenses. The pictures were hand painted on glass slides. Figures were rendered with black paint but soon transparent colors were used. Sometimes the painting was done on oiled paper. Black paint was used as a background to block superfluous light, so the figures could be projected without distracting borders or frames. Many slides were finished with a layer of transparent lacquer, but in a period cover glasses were used to protect the painted layer. Most hand-made slides were mounted in wood frames with a square opening for the picture. After 1820 the manufacturing of hand colored printed slides started making use of decalcomania transfers. Many manufactured slides were produced on strips of glass with several pictures on them and rimmed with a strip of glued paper; the first photographic lantern slides, called "Hyalotypes", were invented by the German-born brothers Ernst Wilhelm and Friedrich Langenheim in 1848 in Philadelphia and patented in 1850.
Apart from sunlight, the only light sources available at the time of invention in the 17th century were candles and oil lamps, which were inefficient and produced dim projected images. The invention of the Argand lamp in the 1790s helped to make the images brighter; the invention of limelight in the 1820s made them much brighter. The invention of the intensely bright electric arc lamp in the 1860s eliminated the need for combustible gases or hazardous chemicals, the incandescent electric lamp further improved safety and convenience, although not brightness. Several types of projection systems existed before the invention of the magic lantern. Giovanni Fontana, Leonardo Da Vinci and Cornelis Drebbel did describe and/or draw image projectors that may have been quite similar to the magic lantern. In the 17th century there was an immense interest in optics; the telescope and microscope were invented and apart from being useful to some scientists, such instruments were popular as entertaining curiosities with people who could afford them.
The magic lantern would prove to be a perfect successor. The magic lantern can be seen as a further development of camera obscura; this is a natural phenomenon that occurs when an image of a scene at the other side of a screen is projected through a small hole in that screen as an inverted image on a surface opposite to the opening. It was known at least since the 5th century BCE and experimented with in darkened rooms at least since circa 1000 CE; the use of a lens in the hole has been traced back to circa 1550. The portable camera obscura box with a lens was developed in the 17th century. Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel is thought to have sold one to Dutch poet and diplomat Constantijn Huygens in 1622, while the oldest known clear description of a box-type camera is in German Jesuit scientist Gaspar Schott's 1657 book Magia universalis naturæ et artis; the 1645 first edition of German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher's book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae included a description of his invention, the "Steganographic Mirror": a primitive projection system with a focusing lens and text or pictures painted on a concave mirror reflecting sunlight intended for long distance communication.
He saw limitations in the increase of size and diminished clarity over a long distance and expressed his hope that someone would find a method to improve on this. In 1654 Belgian Jesuit mathematician André Tacquet used Kircher's technique to show the journey from China to Belgium of Italian Jesuit missionary Martino Martini, it is sometimes reported that Martini lectured throughout Europe with a magic lantern which he might have imported from China, but there's no evidence that anything other than Kircher's technique was used. However, Tacquet was a correspondent and friend of Christiaan Huygens and may thus have been a early adapter of the magic lantern technique that Huygens developed around this period. Prominent Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, is nowadays accepted as the true inventor of the magic lantern, he knew Athanasius Kircher's 1645 edition of Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae which described a primitive projection system with a focusing lens and text or pictures painted on a concave mirror reflecting sunlight.
Christiaan's father Constantijn had been acquainted with Cornelis Drebbel who used some unidentified optical techniques to transform himself and summon wonderful appearances in magical performances. Constantijn Huygens wrote very
Praxinoscope
The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder; the praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered. Reynaud introduced the Praxinoscope-Théâtre in 1879; this was the same device, but it was hidden inside a box to show only the moving figures within added theatrical scenery. When the set was assembled inside the unfolded box, the viewer looked through a rectangular slot in the front, onto a plate with a transparent mirror surrounded by a printed proscenium; the mirror reflected a background and a floor that were printed on interchangeable cards placed on the inside of the folded lid of the box, below the viewing slot.
The animated figures were printed on black strips, so they were all, visible through the transparent mirror and appeared to be moving within the suggested space, reflected from the background and floor cards. The set appeared with 20 strips, 12 backgrounds and a mirror intended for background effects for the swimming figure; this set sold well and appeared in slight variations, including a deluxe version made of thuja-wood with ebony inlays. Reynaud mentioned the possibility of projecting the images in his 1877 patent, he presented a praxinoscope projection device at the Société française de photographie on 4 June 1880, but did not market his praxinoscope a projection before 1882. Only a handful of examples are known to still exist. In 1888 Reynaud developed the Théâtre Optique, an improved version capable of projecting images on a screen from a longer roll of pictures. From 1892 he used the system for his Pantomimes lumineuses: a show with hand-drawn animated stories for larger audiences, it was successful for several years, until it was eclipsed in popularity by the photographic film projector of the Lumière brothers.
The praxinoscope was copied by several other companies. Ernst Plank offered several variations, including one, automated by a small hot air engine; the Red Raven Magic Mirror and its special children's phonograph records, introduced in the US in 1956, was a 20th-century adaptation of the praxinoscope. The Magic Mirror was a sixteen-sided praxinoscopic reflector with angled facets, it was placed over the record player's spindle and rotated along with the 78 rpm record, which had a large label with a sequence of sixteen interwoven animation frames arrayed around its center. As the record played, the user gazed into the Magic Mirror and saw an endlessly repeating animated scene that illustrated the recorded song. In the 1960s, versions of the Red Raven system were introduced in Europe and Japan under various names—Teddy in France and the Netherlands, Mamil Moviton in Italy, etc; the word praxinoscope translates as "action viewer", from the Greek roots πραξι- and scop-. Electrotachyscope History of film Kinematofor Strobe light Zoetrope Zoopraxiscope A picture and further information Praxinoscopes: Kenyon College Department of Physics A demonstration of this and similar optical toys, including the zoetrope The Influence of Emile Reynaud More on Reynaud's Théåtre Optique
Herne Bay Museum and Gallery
The Seaside Museum Herne Bay is a local museum in Herne Bay, England. It was established in 1932 and is notable for being a seaside tourist attraction featuring local archaeological and social history, for featuring the history of the town as a tourist resort, for its local art exhibitions, for its World War II bouncing bomb. Admission is free to local residents but an entry fee is charged to visitors; the management of the Museum was awarded by Canterbury City Council to the Herne Bay Museum Trust, who reopened it in July 2015 as The Seaside Museum Herne Bay. The museum was established in 1932 as Herne Bay Records Society. From 1936 to 1939 the exhibits were in the hall at 53 Mortimer Street, Herne Bay, from 1939 the museum was sited in the High Street above the Public Library, it moved to its present no. 12 William Street site in 1996. The William Street premises is a Georgian building now in a Conservation Area, William Street was the main shopping street until at least 1883, it was run for years by local historian, Harold Gough, is funded and administered by Canterbury City Council.
The exhibits are owned by Herne Bay Historical Records Society, loaned to Canterbury City Council museums service. The museum was a Canterbury City Council Mystery Shopper Awards 2009 silver award winner; the gallery hosts local art exhibitions, there is a free events programme. Dr Thomas Armstrong Bowes MA MD FSA was a local medical doctor, local historian and collector, he rescued stone tools and artefacts turned up by workmen and builders in the area, benefiting from the constant excavations of F. W. J. Palmer, Surveyor to the Council between 1891 and 1915, he photographed local historical artefacts to make lantern slides for his lectures. He retired in 1930 and founded the Herne Bay Records Society and Museum in 1932, donated much of his collection in 1936 to the museum, where it was housed in the hall at 53 Mortimer Street, he was president of the HBRS from 1949 to 1951. Harold Gough was a successor to Dr Tom Bowes in that he was a local writer and honorary curator of the Herne Bay Records Society who helped to run the museum for many years.
He was responsible, for example, for the museum's exhibits on Herne Bay clock tower, the first of its kind, for researching the clock tower and other local landmarks, such as Herne Bay Pier. He was president of the Herne Bay Historical Records Society from 1992 to 2008. Ken Reedie was curator of the Canterbury museums from the early 1970s until 2011; the collections illustrate 60 million years of living history in the area, from fossils through Stone Age artefacts, the Roman fort and Anglo-Saxon church at Reculver, smuggling at Herne, the town's development as a Victorian seaside resort, the two world wars and social history. Themes include the surrounding area, piers, the clock tower, archaeology and local history, thus the museum provides material for education about evolution as well as preserving a sense of local identity, as oral history would have done in previous cultures. Most of the museum's collections are owned by the Herne Bay Historical Trust, which inherited them from Dr Tom Bowes.
The main attraction for tourists is a prototype of the World War II Barnes Wallis Highball bouncing bomb, tested in the sea off Reculver between 6 April and 13 May 1943. The location was chosen because the shallow water allowed easy recovery at low tide, it was secure and close to RAF Manston. To imitate the weight of explosive, the designers filled the Highball with checol: concrete and chalk; the Army found this exhibit on the seabed in 1997, it has been conserved for display. The Upkeep bouncing bomb, a development of this prototype, was used in the 1943 Dambuster raids. A mine and not a bomb, it worked by skimming like a pebble over water to jump over torpedo nets, it was designed to hit the dam and roll down to 30 feet where the water pressure caused detonation. Archaeological exhibits include Anglo-Saxon finds from the Saxon church at Reculver and Roman archaeology from the Roman fort nearby. Palaeontological exhibits include mammoth tusks and an educational search exercise for children to find sharks' teeth: first in trays at the museum, where there are five Stratolamia macrota, in the sand and small stones at low tide.
There is an exhibit of numbered and named fossils found in 1939 at Bishopstone by beachcomber J. E. Cooper, it consists of the following 50–60 million-years-old items: sharks' teeth Stratolamia striata and Odotus obliquus. These had been washed out of the cliffs by the sea; this was established soon after 43 CE, on land, at that time a mile from the sea, at the north end of the Wantsum channel. The Wantsum once separated Thanet from mainland Kent, the fort was there to defend the Roman fleet anchored in the channel, it was rebuilt in the third century CE to protect the coast from Saxon longship raids. It was 170 by 180 metres, with three-metre-thick walls with gates, surrounded by an earth rampart, by
Kaiserpanorama
The Kaiserpanorama is a form of stereoscopic entertainment medium used chiefly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a precursor to film, invented by August Fuhrmann. It was patented by the inventor ca. 1890. There would be a number of viewing stations through which people would peer through a pair of lenses showing a number of rotating stereoscopic glass slides. By 1910 he is said to have controlled exhibitions in over 250 branches across Europe, in the central archive have up to 100,000 slides stored. A kaiserpanorama would have around 25 wooden stations, each with a pair of viewing lenses. Inside the device there would be a rotating mechanism showing numerous stereoscopic images on rear-illuminated glass, giving a 3D effect. Various modern reconstructions as well as few authentic, remaining kaiserpanoramas exist in the Munich Stadtmuseum, German Historical Museum, the Märkisches Museum, Pioneer Settlement, Muzeum Kinematografii, Deutsches Technikmuseum, the Dusseldorf Film Museum and Teylers Museum.
Another example is the Warsaw Fotoplastikon, built in 1905, despite similar design, is not under the name kaiserpanorama. During the German occupation, it was used by the Polish resistance as a meeting point. There was a dismantled kaiserpanorama in Snibston Discovery Museum in Coalville, Leicestershire, UK. However, since the museum is now closed, the item is now in storage and under the care of Leicester City Council; the museum of the occupation at the Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory in Kraków, uses a fotoplastikon to show historical pictures. Http://www.aiq.talktalk.net/3D/kaiserpanorama.htm http://inthejungleofcities.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/the-kaiser-panorama/ http://ignomini.com/photographica/stereophotovintage/kaiserpanorama/kaiserpanorama.html http://dmim-blog.com/2012/12/28/the-kaiser-panorama/
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788; the Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently, have only had common ownership since 1967. In 1959, the historian of journalism Allan Nevins analysed the importance of The Times in shaping the views of events of London's elite: For much more than a century The Times has been an integral and important part of the political structure of Great Britain, its news and its editorial comment have in general been coordinated, have at most times been handled with an earnest sense of responsibility. While the paper has admitted some trivia to its columns, its whole emphasis has been on important public affairs treated with an eye to the best interests of Britain.
To guide this treatment, the editors have for long periods been in close touch with 10 Downing Street. The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as The Times of India and The New York Times. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is referred to as The London Times or The Times of London, although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution; the Times is the originator of the used Times Roman typeface developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing. In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in Times Modern; the Times was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 in an attempt to appeal more to younger readers and commuters using public transport. The Sunday Times remains a broadsheet; the Times had an average daily circulation of 417,298 in January 2019. An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006.
It has been used by scholars and researchers because of its widespread availability in libraries and its detailed index. A complete historical file of the digitised paper, up to 2010, is online from Gale Cengage Learning; the Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company where he worked went bankrupt due to losses from a Jamaican hurricane. Unemployed, Walter began a new business venture. Henry Johnson had invented the logography, a new typography, reputedly faster and more precise. Walter bought the logography's patent and with it opened a printing house to produce a daily advertising sheet; the first publication of the newspaper The Daily Universal Register in Great Britain was 1 January 1785. Unhappy because the word Universal was omitted from the name, Walter changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times. In 1803, Walter handed editorship to his son of the same name.
In spite of Walter Sr's sixteen-month stay in Newgate Prison for libel printed in The Times, his pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news from France, helped build the paper's reputation among policy makers and financiers. The Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its early life, the profits of The Times were large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers. Beginning in 1814, the paper was printed on the new steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig. In 1815, The Times had a circulation of 5,000. Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor in 1817. In the same year, the paper's printer James Lawson and passed the business onto his son John Joseph Lawson. Under the editorship of Barnes and his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane, the influence of The Times rose to great heights in politics and amongst the City of London.
Peter Fraser and Edward Sterling were two noted journalists, gained for The Times the pompous/satirical nickname'The Thunderer'. The increased circulation and influence of the paper was based in part to its early adoption of the steam-driven rotary printing press. Distribution via steam trains to growing concentrations of urban populations helped ensure the profitability of the paper and its growing influence; the Times was the first newspaper to send war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. W. H. Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War, was immensely influential with his dispatches back to England. In other events of the nineteenth century, The Times opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws until the number of demonstrations convinced the editorial board otherwise, only reluctantly supported aid to victims of the Irish Potato Famine, it enthusiastically supported the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which reduced corruption and increased the electorate from 400,000 people to 800,000 people.
During the American Civil War, The Times represented the view of the wealthy classes, favouring the secessionists, but it was not a supporter of slavery. The third John Walter, the founder's grandson, succeeded his father in 1847; the paper continued as more or less independent, but from t
Zoopraxiscope
The zoöpraxiscope is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector. It was conceived by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879. Muybridge used the projector in his public lectures from 1880 to 1895; the projector used 16" glass disks onto which Muybridge had an unidentified artist paint the sequences as silhouettes. This technique eliminated the backgrounds and enabled the creation of fanciful combinations and additional imaginary elements. Only one disk used photographic images, of a horse skeleton posed in different positions. A series of 12" discs, made in 1892–1894, used outlines drawn by Erwin F. Faber that were printed onto the discs photographically colored by hand; these colored discs were never used in Muybridge's lectures. All images of the known 71 disks, including those of the photographic disk, were rendered in elongated form to compensate the distortion of the projection; the projector was related to other projecting phenakistiscopes and used some slotted metal shutter discs that were interchangeable for different picture disks or different effects on the screen.
The machine was hand-cranked. The device appears to have been one of the primary inspirations for Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, the first commercial film exhibition system. Images from all of the known seventy-one surviving zoopraxiscope discs have been reproduced in the book Eadweard Muybridge: The Kingston Museum Bequest....it is the first apparatus used, or constructed, for synthetically demonstrating movements analytically photographed from life, in its resulting effects is the prototype of the various instruments which, under a variety of names, are used for a similar purpose at the present day. As stipulated in Muybridge's will the original machine and disks in his possession were left to Kingston upon Thames, where they are still kept in the Kingston Museum Muybridge Bequest Collection. Muybridge produced a series of 50 different paper'Zoopraxiscope discs', again with pictures drawn by Erwin F. Faber; the discs were intended for sale at the 1893 World's Fair at Chicago, but seem to have sold poorly and are quite rare.
The discs were printed in black-and-white, with twelve different discs produced as chromolithographed versions. Of the coloured versions only four different ones are known to still exist with a total of five or six extant copies. History of cinema List of film formats Strobe light Zoopraxiscope - Royal Borough of Kingston. Information about the Eadweard Muybridge Collection. Candy Spinner mobile application featuring zoopraxiscope images: Android, Apple Interactive online zoetrope/zoopraxiscope
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