The Optical Machine Taxonomy

Optical Machine

This website is the definitive guide to the full diversity of optical machines from the 17^th century to the present. It is written with hyperlinks, and to understand it fully you should follow the links.

Figure TX.1 –Mondo Niovo
Italian Showbox. Photo © Ana David-Mendes.

Figure TX.2 –Zograscope
The zograscope is also an optical machine that takes a very different form from the mondo niovo. Photo © Rod Bantjes.

Definition: An optical machine is any device that uses either a convex lens or concave mirror to enhance the 3D effect of a non-stereoscopic image.^[xxx] The variety of these devices is so great that none of the words commonly used for them – peepshow, Guckkasten, boite d'optique, optical box – can encompass all of them. So I have chosen the 18^th-century term "optical machine" because it is no longer in use and people do not have any preconceptions or misconceptions about it.

Categories: There is a lot of confusion about the different types of optical machines and what to call them. The same terms, like "raree show" or "cosmorama", are sometimes used for very different things, so that it is impossible to be sure what a writer is referring to when they use them unless they give a clear description or supply a picture. Descriptions are often inadequate because writers rarely have technical knowledge of how such devices work and what to look for to characterize their differences. Drawings or paintings often suffer from the same deficiency on the part of the artist. Even photographs can be insufficient because they do not show inner workings or measurements. We rely on the materiality of the devices and their location within the broader context of other devices to make clearer distinctions.

Materiality: My collaborator Ana David Mendes and I like to see, touch, measure and put to use actual devices before deciding how to characterize them. The academic term for that is "experimental media archaeology." I also make optical devices and scientific instruments from the past. The discipline of building devices gives me better insight into the logic of their design. There is no academic term for that.

Context: Optical machines are part of a vast network of interrelated devices. To categorize and name types of optical machines – such as zograscopes or polyorama panoptiques – you need to know the devices that they are related to and at what point distantly-related devices differ enough to draw a line and say "here is where zograscopes differ from other diagonal-mirror viewers." This is one of the benefits of our unique "taxonomic" approach.

Typological Approach: We take a Weberian approach to categorization.^[xxx] Categories are merely templates that help us speak in consistent and somewhat precise ways about a reality that is essentially uncategorizable because the things in it are fluid, hybrid and differ with one another along continua. There are no "natural kinds." The closest thing to a natural kind in the world of optical machines would be a device like the Polyorama Panoptique that is factory made. The jigs, moulds and presses that turn out identical component parts ensure a kind of "genetic" uniformity of the assembled units. Still, like DNA clones, they are always subject to surprising mutations.

Figure TX.1 –Homology in Structures of the Limb
The component bones can be mapped across all four examples as "the same" (e.g. radius (s) and ulna (a)) despite differences in size, form and function.

Taxonomy

A taxonomy is a tool for mapping the relationships between overwhelmingly large numbers of things. Comparison across many examples can reveal surprising themes and variations in form and function. For example, we can say that the four very different things in Figure TX.1 are nonetheless all forelimbs. The pattern of relationships among the bones is closely matched across the four (as noted by the letters that label them), even as their individual sizes and shapes differ. The pattern across the four is beautiful and revealing. There are so many levels of similarity and difference here. They are all limbs that sprout from bodies at the same location. Three of them are for locomotion although in different ways – flying (124), swimming (125), walking (126). One, the human arm and hand (127), is for, among other things, grasping artefacts. The grasped artefact takes us beyond biology to any cultural purpose that a human being can imagine.

Optical machines reveal similar patterns within and among themselves. Trends can be mapped over time although not in any linear way. Optical machines also adapt to and "inter-breed" with other media artefacts – new image formats (the photograph, the carte-de-visite, the postcard, the 35mm transparency), stereoscopic apparatuses, cinematic machines, the phonograph.

We are here attending first to the bare-bones of material structure and function. That is only one level of analysis that must be enhanced by understanding the diverse ways that people interacted with these devices and the different cultural meanings they attached to them.

We hope our friends and colleagues in the humanities will forgive us for borrowing a metaphor from biology. We are not proposing some form of technological evolutionism. Nor are we technological determinists. We do hold however that ideas and culture can become embedded in material artefacts in ways that can shape other ideas, artefacts, cultural meanings and practices. .

The index is organized by the era in which the devices were invented, developed or first became known.

In most cases the entries represent the "genus" of a given device, rather than the "species." "Zograscope", for example, is a generic term for different variants of design and construction: suspended vs supported on a stand; round vs square lens cases; single vs double lenses. Within any "species" there are many examples with stylistic and design differences.

Pre-1820 – Vue d'Optique Era

Vertical with Diagonal Mirror:
	Trapez-Guckkasten	Zograscope	Kulissentheater	Folding Diagonal Mirror	Folding-Book Diagonal Mirror	Camera-Optique hybrid-A	Camera-Optique hybrid-B	Pillar Box	Church Tower
Horizontal:
	Raree Show	Mondo Niovo	Rarekiek	Kulissentheater	Dolfini Teatro Rotondo	Friggeri Tower	Cloth Box	Boite d'Optique	Gainsborough's Show-box	Viola Guckkasten
Concave Mirror:	Harris's Box	Perspectiefkast /Concave Mirror
Outliers:	Theatre Maquette	Outliers help to define what the optical machine is not.

1820-1854 – Lithograph Era

Public Exhibition Boxes:
	Cosmorama	Xihu jing jing (China)	Raek (Russia)	Shahr-E Farang (Iran)
Vertical with Diagonal Mirror:
	Austrian Toy Boxes	Folding Toy Box	Folding Diagonal-Mirror Theatre	Pyramid
Horizontal - Paper Diorama:
	Polyorama Panoptique	Boîtes Simples	Lorgnette Pittoresque	Multiple Polyorama	Boîte Dioramique	Thames Tunnel
Horizontal - Other Formats:
	Sang de Boeuf	Cabinet A	Cabinet B	Gothic Lower-Fly	Telescopic Theatre
Concave Mirror:	Mirroscope
Intermedia Hybrids:	Cyclorama
Outliers					Outliers help to define what the optical machine is not.
	Peep Egg	Stereoscope	Paper Theatre	The Crypt

1855-1899 – Photography Era

Devices for Photographs:

Graphoscope

Graphoscope-Stereoscope

Alethoscope

Cosmoscope

Neomonoscope

Lanternscope

1900-1920 – Film Era

Concave Mirror for Snapshots:	Show-Me-Scope	Snapscope	Reflectoscope	Other
Intermedia Hybrids:	Kinora	Bioscope	Filmoscope

Footnotes