The Refractive Anamorphic Viewer - A rediscovered 17th century optical toy

In 1638 Fr. Jean-Francois Niceron published a seminal four-volume book La Perspective Curieuse providing a geometrical analysis of every anamorphic image type known at that time. This oft-quoted but seldom-read book describes perspective anamorphic images and those which must be observed using some type of mirror e.g. cylindrical or conical. Even less well known is the content of Volume 4 where Niceron describes a type of anamorphosis which is resolved by observing it with a particular form of multifaceted prism. This "toy" attracted considerable acclaim at the time and had a profound impact on the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
In the intervening years the toy has been forgotten and not a single complete model survives. I will describe our* efforts to decode the construction of this toy and construct a working model which will be demonstrated for the first time in 350 years.

* Collaboration with John Sharp of the Knowledge Lab, University of London

Jim Hunt is a retired professor of Physics at the University of Guelph. Far from being useful to society in his retirement he wastes his time investigating the connection between mathematics and some forms of art.