Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15190

    Theory of vision

    Date
    15 March 1682
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p15
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 208mm
    width (page): 168mm
    Description
    Figure illustrating William Briggs's theory of vision, which was read to the Royal Society on 15 March 1682. It was printed in Philosophical Collections, 6 (1682).
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 15 March 1682, ‘Mr. Aston read a paper of William Briggs, M.D. concerning a new theory of vision, explaining the cause, why, though the picture of the object be made in both eyes, and so be seen by both, yet the imagination forms but one idea, which he conceived to be an harmonious tension of corresponding fibres of the optic nerve. Some objections were made about the tension of such fibres; but because the debating thereof would have been too long for the present meeting, it was respited to another' (Birch 4:136).

    Printed as fig. 1 in W. Briggs, ‘A New Theory of Vision’, Philosophical Collections, 6 (1682), pp. 167-78 (legend for figure at p. 178).
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