A Daily History of Holes, Dots, Lines, Science, History, Math, Physics, Art, the Unintentional Absurd, Architecture, Maps, Data Visualization, Blank and Missing Things, and so on. |1.6 million words, 7500 images, 4.9 million hits| Press & appearances in The Times, Le Figaro, Mensa, The Economist, The Guardian, Discovery News, Slate, Le Monde, Sci American Blogs, Le Pont, and many other places… 5000+ total posts since 2008.

The Origin of Shadows and Directions of Vanishing Points

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

Dubreuil origins of shadows det 1_edited-1

 Shadows must come from somewhere, and it is that “somewhere” that this beautifully-titled chapter addresses.

Dubreuil origins of shadows det 1

In another unusually-titled piece, we find a “shadow-maker” embedded within  patented “cloud creator”, as so

this taken from the 25 May 1892 patent granted to Steele MacKaye, though his apparatus was only for generating special effects for the theatre.  Still, the title of the patent was pretty catchy, as was the “shadow-maker” part, which is evidently the only time that phrase is used in U.S. patents through 1900. 

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