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A tribute the man who may have made it all possible
Inspired by the threads about the history of Photography I though I'd share my enthusiasm for an old fella who some of you may know of. Permit me a little bit of a shaggy dog story but hopefully it will illustrate why this guy was a 'cool dude'
His name is the Abū Alī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham. (he gets called al-Haytham) He's long dead.
Well, 1000 years ago, he was considered pretty good at mathematics. So good, he was hired to predict the seemingly random episodes of the flooding of the Nile in Egypt, and to devise a way of stemming the flood when it next occurred. He built some clever structures that still exist today, which measured the height of the river, and through mathematical modeling could predict next time it would flood.
Sadly, the boss wasn't happy with that and asked him to actually stop the next flood. After trying to build a dam at Aswan (now known to be quite a good place to build a dam) he realised it was impossible and pretended to go mad to get out of the deal (this sounds bad now, but relative to what happened at the time to sane people reneging on a deal, was the best way out)
So our pal Al-Haytham was under house arrest from 1011 until his imprisoner's death 10 years later. This was before the Normans conquered England. In fact they had only just become Normans after invading France, lions still roamed Europe, and Spain was still Muslim, hundreds of years away from dominating the world with Catholicism and destroying Science with the Inquisition and the Dark Ages.
Anyway, he had some great ideas about optics. He proved that light travels in straight lines. He also made the first Camera Obscura. On the way, he just happened to define the Scientific Method
I would heartily encourage everyone to have a little read of what this fella did for Maths, Physics and Optics. And (if you'll forgive me for a little bit of politicising) think about where in the world he came from: Basra, Iraq.
He's certainly my photographic hero.
(for the record I'm not promoting this as a cultural/religious thing: I'm an athiest born as a Scottish Presbyterian)
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Atheism, And Analog Photography.
We Might Have To Create An APUG Group !
Ron
From The Long Island Of New York,
And The Macro Management, and Long Island @ Large Format APUG Groups
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" When We Are Dead, We Will Have More Than Enough Time To Be Sesquipedalians "
~ M.A. Longmore
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 Originally Posted by Ron LarFor4X5
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Atheism, And Analog Photography.
We Might Have To Create An APUG Group !
It's a good combination for me!
Steve.
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I'm leaving for work in a few minutes,
but I'll create the group when I get home !
Unless someone else gets to it first.
Ron
From The Long Island Of New York,
And The Macro Management, and Long Island @ Large Format APUG Groups
.
__________________________________________________ _________________________
" When We Are Dead, We Will Have More Than Enough Time To Be Sesquipedalians "
~ M.A. Longmore
__________________________________________________ _____________________
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this could be interesting.
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Originally Posted by neilpcraven
Anyway, he had some great ideas about optics. He proved that light travels in straight lines. He also made the first Camera Obscura. On the way, he just happened to define the Scientific Method
Credit to whom it is due: Alhazen is an important guy.
He however also was about 15 - 16 centuries late in making the first camera obscura.
Much of his contribution to the scientific method too was something he learned from people who lived many, many centuries earlier.
But still!
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Originally Posted by Ron LarFor4X5
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Atheism, And Analog Photography.
We Might Have To Create An APUG Group !
AAAP? (Atheism And Analog Photography)
or
APUG? (Atheist's Photography Users Group)
Be free of all deception, Be safe from bodily harm
Love without exception, Be a saint in any form
(Patti Smith)
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Originally Posted by Q.G.
Credit to whom it is due: Alhazen is an important guy.
He however also was about 15 - 16 centuries late in making the first camera obscura.
Much of his contribution to the scientific method too was something he learned from people who lived many, many centuries earlier.
But still!
Even "Common Sense" is a Learned Technique!
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Originally Posted by Ron LarFor4X5
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I'm leaving for work in a few minutes,
but I'll create the group when I get home !
Unless someone else gets to it first.
Will this be the 2nd group of yours that I have to join Ron? At least with this one I'm justified in belonging! (member of the Long Island group, though I've never even been to the east coast north of NC)
But seriously, this is a nice post about a cool guy that deserves recognition for sure. I'd like to take a shot at reading 'Optics'.
And did lions really roam Europe?
From the film shooters will rise a well developed practice of the alternative processes that, in time, will be adopted in the age of the digital image to free it from the extreme boringness of pressing print.
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Ibn al-Haytham was a real badass polymath, all right. I stumbled over him (well, not in person, but his historical influence) while in gradual school---geometers, it turns out, *really* owe their livelihoods to that guy, but he's not particularly well-known as a Great Mathematician Of History.
He doesn't seem to have built *the* first camera obscura, but he may have been the first to get systematic about understanding what one was and how it worked. It kind of depends on where you draw the line between saying "If you poke a hole here it does something interesting" and "I'm gonna build me a camera!"
-NT
Nathan Tenny
San Diego, CA, USA
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, they are about the same distance apart.
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