Camera lucida

The British chemist and physicist William Hyde Wollaston reported in 1806 under the name of Camera Lucida a patent for a drawing instrument, whose principle was already known for some time. Inter alia seems to have been Johannes Kepler knew one such device. The camera lucida fulfilled a similar purpose as the camera obscura and was used for sign-off of landscapes or portraits. In biological research camera lucida projections of microscopic preparations were used as a sign of submission.

Operation

" The camera lucida is a quadrangular prism, which is mounted for use in the open air on a holder and fixed to the document character [... ] and is attached to the eyepiece of a telescope or a microscope. "

When you look through a camera lucida Kuckloch directly over the edge of the prism, which raises the outlines of the subject onto the drawing paper. The user can thereby simultaneously see the outlines of the subject and the paper and then the object can easily emerge. With the camera lucida, ie primarily the making of relatively lifelike images is simplified.

History

William Henry Fox Talbot, who was unhappy with his drawing talent, had been looking for a tool to customize 1833 sketches on Lake Como and therefore further developed based on the camera obscura projection devices, which had already been constructed, for example, in 1679 by Robert Hooke. During the 19th and 20th century, the camera lucida developed into an important tool in entomology for accurately drawing the Flügelgeäders of insects.

Related devices

The Physionotrace from 1786 is a mechanical aid for engraving silhouettes.