Optical Illusion - Stereograms

What I saw was a bunch of different coloured squiggly lines all connected up to make, what looked like, a mess!

" Just stare at the painting and find the image within " he said.

Fine, so there I was in a busy craft market staring at a large picture infront of me.

I saw nothing but the lines.....so I stared some more.
Still nothing.

Then some other people stood beside me and began to stare.

I must have been staring for at least two minutes and was about to give in when one of the people beside me shouted out in surprise,
" I see it! I can see the image "

Apart from peeing me off the fact that someone found the answer before me actually motivated me more to discover this trick of the eyes.

In a moment of pity, the guy who owned the stall, walked over to me and told me to try to stare through the picture.

Yeh right, do I look like Superman?!!

I took his advice and tried again.
Twenty seconds went by and then.....wham!....there it was!

Right in the middle, amongst all those squiggly lines, was the image of The Empire State Building.

I was hooked.

Here is a very brief history.

A stereogram is an optical illusion; a flat two dimensional image that reveals a three dimensional image if viewed in a certain way.

Some other forms of stereograms include Anaglyphs and Autostereograms.

In 1838 a British scientist and inventor, Charles Wheatstone, discovered the stereogram through his explanation of, binocular vision.
Binocular vision is the ability to maintain visual focus on an object with both eyes, thus creating a single visual image.

With a combination of prisms and mirrors, Wheatstone, designed and constructed a stereoscope. This is a viewing device which allows users to create a three-dimensional image from a set of two-dimensional photographs or drawings.

Later, in 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, ( author, lecturer,physician and professor ), invented an improved form of stereoscope that became quite popular.

This new improved stereoscope was a simple device with a special viewer. It had a clip for holding special stereoscopic cards in place.

A person would peer through a binocular system, which forced each eye to see only one of the two images. By either crossing or diverging one's eyes, a third image would eventually appear in the middle.

They were a popular form of entertainment for people in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Of course, with the emergence of computers in later years things changed a little.

Now computers were used to create autostereograms.

An autostereogram is a single-image stereogram (SIS), designed to create the visual illusion of a three-dimensional (3D) scene from a two-dimensional image in the human brain.

THE PULL BACK

Make a photocopy and move your face so your nose is touching the picture. This should put your eyes out of focus. With the picture up close, pretend that you are looking straight ahead, right through it. Now slowly pull your face away while keeping your eyes pointed straight ahead. If you do this slow enough, an image usually appears when the picture is at the correct distance.

THE REFLECTION

A reflective surface it is a lot easier to converge your eyes in the correct position. Simply focus on your nose or a central reflection in the picture, and wait until you focus on the image.

DRUNKEN EYES

If you have ever been drunk before then trying this could be easy. Try to get into a " staring-eyes " mode. Look through the object and not at it.

THE WALL AND FINGER

Stand about two yards distance facing a wall. Hold the picture up. Look *over* the top of the picture towards the wall, and focus on something such as a picture hook or mark. While keeping this "gaze" lower your eyes while keeping them converged on the wall.

Here is another approach but for cross-eyed viewing. Hold the picture at arm's length and put your finger onto it. While slowly pulling your finger towards your face, keep looking at your finger. The picture will become blurry, and at the correct position you will (eventually) see the 3D image.

SEE RIGHT THROUGH

Photocopy the picture onto a transparency. Then do exactly as instructed in " The Wall And Finger " above, except now you don't need to change the position of your gaze.

Take a look at these amazing images below and see what you can find.

Optical Illusion Quiz