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Letter: Letters: Fooling the brain

Published 27 July 1991

From JON MILLER

I was interested to see, from ‘Viewers keeps one eye open for 3-D’ (Technology,
13 July), that Coca-Cola took the trouble to make 40 million pairs of spectacles
when all that is really needed are two fingers placed correctly over one
eye.

In a book of mine, How to Fool Your Brain (published 1975), I explained
how to get this 3-D effect by half closing or partially covering one eye.
This way objects moving across the screen will appear in 3-D relative to
their background (or foreground depending on which eye is being partially
covered).

Those with home videos can experiment with this effect. A good simple
subject is one of someone walking in front of, or just behind, a fence.

Jon Miller Helston, Cornwall

Issue no. 1779 published 27 July 1991

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