Impossible trident
An impossible trident , also called a blivet , devil's claw or the devil's tuning fork , etc., is a drawing of an impossible figure , a kind of optical illusion . The object depicted appears to have three spikes on one side that unite to form two spikes or legs on the other side.
background
In 1964, DH Schuster noticed that he had noticed a strange drawing in the advertising area of an aviation magazine. He called the depicted object a “three-stick clevis” (“trident U-bracket”) and described it as follows: “Unlike other ambiguous drawings, an actual shift in visual fixation is involved in its perception and resolution”.
In 1965 the cover of the US satirical magazine MAD showed a four-eyed Alfred E. Neumann with such a trident, which was given the name "Poiuyt" (the last six letters of the upper row of American typewriters, from right to left). The term "blivet" for the impossible trident was popularized by The Worm Runner's Digest magazine . In 1967 Harold Baldwin published the article Building better blivets there , in which he established rules for creating drawings based on the impossible trident.
In December 1968, American optician and artist Roger Hayward wrote the humorous article Blivets: Research and Development for The Worm Runner's Digest , in which he presented various drawings based on the Blivet. He “explained” the term as follows: “ The blivet was first discovered in 1892 in Pfulingen, Germany, by a cross-eyed dwarf named Erasmus Wolfgang Blivet ”.
Individual evidence
- ↑ thorsten-reinecke.de
- ↑ Andrew M. Colman: A Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-953406-7 , p. 369 books.google.com
- ↑ zaubermuseum.de
- ↑ a b Brooks Masterton, John M. Kennedy, Building the Devil's Tuning Fork. In: Perception 1975, Volume 4, pp. 107-109.
- ↑ DH Schuster: A New Ambiguous Figure: A Three-Stick Clevis . In: The American Journal of Psychology . tape 77 , no. 4 , 1964, pp. 673–673 , doi : 10.2307 / 1420787 ( researchgate.net - quote: “In contrast to other impossible drawings, here there is actually a change in the focal point, which contributes to perception and interpretation.”).
- ↑ zaubermuseum.de page with reproduction of the "MAD" cover (German)
- ^ William Perl: Blivet or Not. In: The Journal of Biological Psychology. 1969.
- ^ Martin Gardner: Mathematical Circus. Pelican Books, 1981, p. 5.
- ^ Science, Sex, and Sacred Cows: Spoofs on Science from the Worm Runner's Digest. 1971, pp. 91–93, books.google.com Quote: "The Blivet was first discovered in 1892 in Pfulingen, Germany by the cross-eyed dwarf Erasmus Wolfgang Blivet."