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PubMed · 16731495

Visual persistence and cinema?

Yves Galifret
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Abstract

In Faraday and Plateau's days, both apparent motion and the fusion of intermittent lights, two phenomena that are hardly connected, were explained by retinal persistence. The works of Exner and of the 'Gestalt' psychologists, as well as the modern works on 'sampled' motion and smooth motion, disregarded retinal persistence. One tried, originally, to measure this persistence using intermittent stimulation, but under the pressure of practical concern, what was established in 1902 was the logarithmic relation between fusion frequency and the intensity of the stimulation. One had to wait until the 1950s for the use of harmonic analysis to finally allow a renewal in which many problems that, for decades, had only given rise to discussions that led nowhere and to groundless assertions, were correctly stated and easily solved.

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Flicker FusionHistory, 19th CenturyHistory, 20th CenturyHumansMotion PerceptionMotion PicturesNeurophysiologyVisual PerceptionHistorical ArticleJournal Article

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Yves Galifret. 2006-04-18. Visual persistence and cinema?. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crvi.2006.03.008

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