Abstract
Ocular equivocation was the term given by Brewster in 1844 to binocular contour rivalry seen with Wheatstone’s stereoscope. The rivalries between Wheatstone and Brewster were personal as well as perceptual. In the 1830s, both Wheatstone and Brewster came to stereoscopic vision armed with their individual histories of research on vision. Brewster was an authority on physical optics and had devised the kaleidoscope; Wheatstone extended his research on audition to render acoustic patterns visible with his kaleidophone or phonic kaleidoscope. Both had written on subjective visual phenomena, a topic upon which they first clashed at the inaugural meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1832 (the year Wheatstone made the first stereoscopes). Wheatstone published his account of the mirror stereoscope in 1838; Brewster’s initial reception of it was glowing but he later questioned Wheatstone’s priority. They both described investigations of binocular contour rivalry but their interpretations diverged. As was the case for stereoscopic vision, Wheatstone argued for central processing whereas Brewster’s analysis was peripheral and based on visible direction. Brewster’s lenticular stereoscope and binocular camera were described in 1849. They later clashed over Brewster’s claim that the Chimenti drawings were made for a 16th-century stereoscope. The rivalry between Wheatstone and Brewster is illustrated with anaglyphs that can be viewed with red/cyan glasses and in Universal Freeview format; they include rivalling ‘perceptual portraits’ as well as examples of the stimuli used to study ocular equivocation.
Highlights
Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875) and David Brewster (1781–1868) were pioneers of research on binocular vision but they did not see eye-to-eye on interpretations of stereoscopic vision or on the history of its study
Association for the Advancement of Science in 1832. Wheatstone published his account of the mirror stereoscope in 1838; Brewster’s initial reception of it was glowing but he later questioned Wheatstone’s priority
Wheatstone examined rivalry between the letters A and S each surrounded by a similar circle (Figure 1) presented in the stereoscope and reported that “the common border will remain constant, while the letter within it will change alternately from that which would be perceived by the right eye alone to that which would be perceived by the left eye alone
Summary
Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875) and David Brewster (1781–1868) were pioneers of research on binocular vision but they did not see eye-to-eye on interpretations of stereoscopic vision or on the history of its study It is fitting, that they both examined binocular rivalry with the aid of Wheatstone’s mirror stereoscope. When different patterns are presented to corresponding regions of each eye, they compete with one another for visibility and the ensuing percepts vary over time Descriptions of this phenomenon have a long history [1], and it is called binocular rivalry. Mirror and prism stereoscopes were made for Wheatstone by Murray and Heath, optical instrument makers in London Brewster announced his more popular (lenticular) stereoscope with paired half-lenses in 1849 [8]; the first. It was in this article that he drew an explicit distinction between mental and physical philosophy; that is, between psychology and physics, and he placed binocular vision in the province of psychology
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