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As a
child, Valerie Thomas became fascinated with the
mysteries of technology, tinkering with electronics with
her father and reading books on electronics written for
adolescent boys. The likelihood of her enjoying a career
in science seemed bleak, as her all-girls high school
did not push her to take advanced science or math
classes or encourage her in that direction. Nonetheless,
her curiosity was piqued and upon her graduation from
high school, she set out on the path to become a
scientist.
Thomas enrolled at Morgan State University and performed
exceedingly well as a student, graduating with a degree
in physics (one of only two women in her class to do
so). She accepted a position with the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), serving as
a data analyst. After establishing herself within the
agency, she was asked to manage the "Landsat" project,
an image processing system that would allow a satellite
to transmit images from space.
In 1976 Thomas attended a scientific seminar where she
viewed an exhibit demonstrating an illusion. The exhibit
used concave mirrors to fool the viewer into believing
that a light bulb was glowing even after it had been
unscrewed from its socket. Thomas was fascinated by what
she saw, and imagined the commercial opportunities for
creating illusions in this manner.
In 1977 she began experimenting with flat mirrors and
concave mirrors. Flat mirrors, of course, provide a
reflection of an object which appear to lie behind the
glass surface. A concave mirror, on the other hand,
presents a reflection that appears to exist in front of
the glass, thereby providing the illusion that they
exist in a three-dimensional manner. Thomas believed
that images, presented in this way could provide a more
accurate, if not more interesting, manner of
representing video data. She not only viewed the process
as a potential breakthrough for commercial television,
but also as scientific tool for NASA and its image
delivery system.
Thomas applied for a patent for her process on December
28, 1978 and the patent was issued on October 21, 1980.
The invention was similar to the technique of
holographic production of image recording which uses
coherent radiation and employs front wave reconstruction
techniques which render the process unfeasible due to
the enormous expense and complicated setup. Parabolic
mirrors, however, can render these optical illusions
with the use use of a concave mirror near the subject
image and a second concave mirror at a remote site. In
the description of her patent, the process is explained.
"Optical illusions may be produced by parabolic mirrors
wherein such images produced thereby are possessed with
three dimensional attributes. The optical effect may be
explained by the fact that the human eyes see an object
from two view points separated laterally by about six
centimeters. The two views show slightly different
spatial relationships between near and near distant
objects and the visual process fuses these stereoscopic
views to a single three dimensional impression. The same
parallax view of an object may be experienced upon
reflection of an object seen from a concave mirror."
(http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4229761.html). The
Illusion Transmitter would thus enable the users to
render three-dimensional illusions in real-time. |
