The Wonders of Optics

IF history has failed to furnish us with the name of the inventor of the microscope, we have very exact information as to the first experimenters upon the powers of the telescope.

WE now come to speak of an instrument which may fairly rank, after the telescope and microscope, as one of the most wonderful discoveries of modern optical science. By its means...

THE above facts show plainly that optical illusions find their source in the very mechanism of the organs of sight, and that without going farther than the eye itself we may dis...

EVERYBODY knows the effects of the action of light, without, however, understanding precisely what constitutes light itself. Any formal definition would rather puzzle than help...

BY varying the disposition of mirrors, prisms, lenses, and light, an infinite number of the most surprising effects may be shown, with a comparatively small amount of trouble an...

THE phantasmagoria may be described as a perfected magic lantern, and bears the same relation to its prototype that a shilling telescope bought in the Lowther Arcade does to one...

WE close our account of the wonders of optics by a description of the ghost illusion, which has been exhibited with such great success by M. Robin, the well-known French conjure...

MOST people understand each other sufficiently to agree in their ideas about various colours. Thus every one agrees in saying that poppies are red, that the sky is blue, and the...

BESIDES the errors of sight already spoken of, there are other illusions, which are either common to all persons or confined to certain individuals, the knowledge of which will...

THE classical student will remember that Archimedes burned the fleet of Marcellus, by means of burning-glasses, from the heights of the fortifications of his native city of Syra...

THE white light that the glorious orb of day spreads over the face of nature is the original source of all those brilliant and sombre colours with which the works of the Creator...

THE Eye is at once the most wonderful and the most useful of all our organs of sense. It is especially by means of the eye that we gain a knowledge of the exterior world. Our ot...

THE illusions of which we have spoken in the first part of this work depended principally on the nature of man’s vision, who, we found, was the constant and heedless victim of h...

OF all the senses, says an ardent admirer of nature, the sight is certainly that which furnishes the mind with the quickest and most widely-extended perceptions. It is the sourc...

THE word lens is derived from the Latin name of the seed of the _Ervum lens_, or ordinary lentil. When eating this wholesome vegetable, almost every one has noticed that its sha...

THE lenses and mirrors whose properties we have been considering in the previous chapters, have been combined in different ways for the purpose of examining objects too small or...

THE solar spectrum may be compared to a battle-field with an army drawn up upon it ready for action. In the centre we find the luminous rays, on one side the light troops which...

WHEN a ray of light falls obliquely on any polished surface, as that of a mirror, a piece of water, a plate of burnished metal, or any other reflecting substance, the ray, like...

WHEN playing about the Christmas fire, children frequently amuse themselves by whirling round and round a piece of wood, one end of which they have previously lighted and blown...

IT is with our own organization that we shall commence our task of exposing the illusions that we shall meet with during our optical experiments,—in fact with that wonderful and...

ALMOST every one in his younger days has possessed and broken that pretty instrument known as the kaleidoscope. His researches into its construction no doubt taught him that it...

HAVING devoted so much space in the preceding chapters to optical amusements of a purely recreative character, it is only right that we should now say a few words on certain ins...

THE colours of the spectrum are to the sense of sight what the tones of the gamut are to the sense of hearing. On the one hand, the differences in the lengths of the sonorous wa...

THE construction of the camera obscura is founded on the fact that the rays of light, when collected into a point either by being passed through a small hole or a converging len...

WHILE upon the subject of optical wonders, we should hardly be forgiven if we did not give a description of the amusement known as Chinese shadows, or Fantocini. In the winter t...

THE description of the polyorama naturally follows that of the phantasmagoria, being a practical application of precisely the same principles. In the case of the polyorama, howe...