Telestereoscope

Though the 19th century German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz is best remembered for his treatise on the conservation of energy and for inventing the opthalmoscope, he is also responsible for another more curious optical device. The telesterescope, which he described in 1857, uses two widely separated mirrors to artificially increase the distance between the eyes. The effect exaggerates the user’s perception of depth, giving “a much clearer representation of the form of a landscape than the view of the landscape itself.” In 2000, a group of artists reconstructed the telestereoscope for the Burning Man Festival. One user described the experience of peering through these “eye stilts” as “like looking at the real world through a Viewmaster.”
* The telestereoscope is described briefly in Instruments and the Imagination by Thomas Hankins and Robert Silverman.

[Del.icio.us | Reddit | Digg]
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.











