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SUMMARY:How to see movement: visual experience in early nineteenth-century
  physics - Chitra Ramalingam (Science Museum and CRASSH\, Cambridge)
DTSTART:20101021T153000Z
DTEND:20101021T170000Z
UID:TALK26655@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Nicky Reeves
DESCRIPTION:It is well known that there was widespread interest in human v
 ision\, optical illusions and optical toys in the early nineteenth century
 . One optical phenomenon that attracted attention from European scientists
 \, intellectuals and publics alike was 'visual persistence'\, which would 
 eventually come to be understood as the basis for the illusion of motion p
 erceived in cinema. The earliest systematic investigation of this illusion
  was carried out by two individuals most commonly associated with the hist
 ory of physics: the London experimental philosophers Charles Wheatstone an
 d Michael Faraday. In this paper I explore why this pair placed the study 
 of human visual experience and its limitations at the centre of their expe
 rimental activities in acoustics and electricity in the 1820s and 1830s. A
  rigorous exploration of the operation of human vision\, put to use in lec
 ture performance techniques and exquisitely engineered optical instruments
 \, could turn private ocular experiences of transient movements (like soun
 d vibrations or electric sparks) into authoritative\, publicly accessible 
 visual facts about the lawlike regularity of nature. The early physics lab
 oratory and lecture hall are found to be important sites where provocative
  theses about nineteenth-century 'ways of seeing' – such as that of the 
 influential art historian Jonathan Crary – can be tested.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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