Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.10778

    Diagnostic experiment using visual persistence

    Date
    1854
    Creator
    William Scoresby (1789 - 1857, British) , British Arctic scientist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (painting): 195mm
    width (painting): 125mm
    Subject
    Description
    Image of a window retained on human retinas when viewed through right and left eyes in turn. The defects in the image (circular and triangular patches on the window-panes) were used by the author as a means of assessing irregularities in each retina in a case of amaurosis.

    Unpublished illustration from the manuscript version of the paper “An enquiry into some of the circumstances and principles which regulate the production of pictures on the retina...part 2” by William Scoresby. The text was abstracted in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol.7 (1854), pp.117-122. The paper and illustration accompanied a letter from William Scoresby, Torquay 12 June 1854, to William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Rosse, in which the case is discussed.

    Signed lower left in ink, ‘W.Scoresby, Del.’

    William Scoresby junior (1789-1857) was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1824.
    Associated place
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