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

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Leonardo’s study of optics and perspective was reported in his Treatise on Painting, written about 1515 and first published at Paris in 1651, but well known prior to that time through manuscript copies. Da Vinci has been a great trial to the students and historians, for he wrote in his own special form of shorthand which was found to be extremely hard to decipher.

Da Vinci experimented with the camera obscura and wrote an accurate scientific description of it, preparing the way for the men who were to make the machine a practical medium. Vasari in his famous Life of Leonardo points out that he gave his attention to mirrors and learned how they operated and how images were formed. But more important than this, he studied the human eye and was the first to explain it accurately, using the camera as his model, and in this way he really learned the fundamentals of its functional principles. To this day the camera is explained in simplest terms as a mechanical eye and the human eye is explained as a marvelous, natural camera. Da Vinci also noted the effects of visible impressions on the eye.