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On the Principle of Temporal Diminution in Serial Photography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2017

Ludwig Mach
Ludwig Mach*
Affiliation:
Translated into English by Daniel Bowles
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Extract

In some cases our sensory organs are no longer capable of rendering processes in the external world perceptible to us. Their inadequacy expresses itself, for example, in phenomena that involve the kind of expansion of space and time in which the conditions for summary perception are no longer at all present. The resources that aid our immediate sense perception in these circumstances will thus be charged with the task of expanding or diminishing space and time to the extent that the contiguity and succession of events is comprehensible to us. The microscope is thus essentially based upon the principle of spatial expansion, the map on that of spatial diminution. The pertinent contrivances for these purposes are largely derived from the graphic arts. How stereoscopy and instantaneous photography, which is based on temporal expansion, facilitate our perception! In spite of the multifarious applications of photography, one has yet to take the step of employing it in the opposite direction, namely as a means of temporal diminution. We demonstrate that phenomena that take place in too ephemeral and too rapid a succession for our eyes can, with the help of instantaneous photographs in series, be analyzed with our senses as the event passes in a comparatively longer time. Quite analogously, we could also compress into a small duration the moments of an event separated widely from one another in time and thereby give our perception an understanding of the nature thereof.

Type
Documents in Translation
Information
Science in Context , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 443 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 In the form of magic lantern slides.

2 Cf. Eder's Jahrbuch für Photographie und Reproductionstechnik from the year 1888: “Bemerkungen über wissenschaftliche Anwendungen der Photographie” by Prof. Dr. E. Mach. [Editors’ note: see the translation of the paper in this volume].

3 The blurriness of the impressions caused by the continuous movement of the retinal image is avoided precisely by the fact that the object is stationary for the moment of perception.

4 In this case, this artificial light is not appropriate to use for projection as one is incapable of funneling sufficient light through the small gap with the lump-shaped figure of the flame arc. When one uses sunlight, this infelicitous circumstance ceases to exist, indeed, one could even make the light slits even narrower, whereby the entire apparatus would be significantly improved. It is likewise advisable, because of the high temperature of the light cone, to place a cuvette filled with an alum solution in front of S.

5 To produce an array of well-running drums for the individual image series, one removes the spindle from the apparatus and places into its lower (open) end a peg equipped with a flange and a running pin. One can then let the screw run between dead centers on any old lathe and precisely turn off aluminum stars stretched over the end cone. Punching holes into the cardboard is likewise very simple work for which one needs only a good hole puncher of the corresponding shape and size.

6 In Figures I–IX, some plant images are represented in chronological order. Fig. I corresponds to the first, Fig. IX. to the last photograph. The others are taken from those images in between. Through an oversight, the same format was not used throughout in reproducing them here, which the projection images must obviously possess.