Signedunsigned
FunctionLooking from behind the frosted screen, the model produces an inverted and reversed image, just as it would appear on the retina of the eye. It is, in other words, a camera obscura.
Historical AttributesBenjamin Martin's invoice of instruments shipped to Harvard in August of 1765 included "an Artificial Eye in Brass" for £2.2.0. It is the only such model mentioned in any of the early inventories of Harvard College-owned equipment.
Published ReferencesDavid P. Wheatland, The Apparatus of Science at Harvard, 1765-1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 118.
Barbara Maria Stafford and Frances Terpak, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001), 144, fig. 21, 365, no. 3.