Читать книгу Magic Shadows. The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures онлайн

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Ptolemy who flourished at Alexandria around 130 A.D. was the greatest scientist of his era and his influence was powerful for fifteen centuries. It was he who developed the Ptolemaic theory which viewed the earth as the center of the universe, with the sun and other bodies revolving around it. That theory very naturally tended to increase man’s idea of his own importance. Ptolemy was a geographer and mathematician as well as an astronomer. His great work was called Almagest by the Arabs. Ptolemy discussed the persistence of vision, the laws of reflection and made studies of refraction.

The poor tools then available and inaccurate understanding of some basic principles prevented in ancient days the discovery of devices capable of capturing the illusion of motion. History played its part, too.

After the stimulus given to all knowledge by the Greeks, little interest in the arts and sciences was taken anywhere for a long time. Then in the 9th century the scholarship of Greece was advanced by the Arabs, from whom Europe began to receive it in the 12th century. During the early Middle Ages, the real “Dark Ages” when barbarian hordes overran much of Europe, the seat of learning was in the Near East, in Arabia and Persia.