30 Sir David Brewster on a Binocular Camera, §c. 



ance and relief as if we had viewed the colossal statue with eyes 

 25 inches distant. But the reproduced statue will have also the 

 same appearance and relief as a statue a foot high, reduced from 

 the colossal one with mathematical precision ; and therefore it 

 will be a better and a more relieved representation of the work 

 of art than if we had viewed the colossal original with our own 

 eyes, either under a greater, an equal, or a less angle of apparent 

 magnitude. 



We have supposed that a statue a foot broad will be seen in 

 proper relief by binocular vision ; but it remains to be decided 

 whether or not it would be more advantageously seen, if reduced 

 with mathematical precision to a breadth of 2^ inches, the width 

 of the eyes, which gives the vision of a hemisphere 2^ inches in 

 diameter, with the most perfect relief. If we adopt this prin- 

 ciple, and call B the breadth of the statue of which we require 



T) 



dissimilar pictures, we must make n—n7> and n x 2| = B, that is, 



the distance of the semilenses in the binocular camera, or of the 

 semilcnses in two cameras, if two are necessary, must be made 

 equal to the breadth of the statue. 



In the same manner we may obtain dissimilar pictures of 

 living bodies, buildings, natural scenery, machines, and objects 

 of all kinds, of three dimensions, and reproduce them by the 

 stereoscope, so as to give the most accurate idea of them to those 

 who could not understand them in drawings of the greatest 

 accuracy. 



The art which we have now described cannot fail to be re- 

 garded as of inestimable value to the sculptor, the painter, and 

 the mechanist, whatever be the nature of his production in three 

 dimensions. Lay figures will no longer mock the eye of the 

 painter. He may delineate at leisure on his canvas, the forms of 

 life and beauty, stereotyped by the solar ray and reconverted 

 into the substantial objects from which they were obtained, bril- 

 liant with the same lights and chastened with the same shadows 

 as the originals. The sculptor will work with similar advantages. 

 Superficial forms will stand before him in three dimensions, and 

 whde he summons into view the living realities from which they 

 were taken, he may avail himself of the labours of all his prede- 

 cessors, of Pericles as well as of Canova ; and he may virtually 

 carry in his portfolio the mighty lions and bulls of Nineveh, — the 

 gigantic sphinxes of Egypt, — the Apollos and Venuses of Grecian 

 avt^ — and all the statuary and sculpture which adorn the galleries 

 and museums of civilized nations. 



