Pseudoscope

This article caught my eye the other day - how to make a pseudoscope. (Wikipedia defines them as this.) As if by chance there was an old vanity mirror under the desk that looked perfect for the job and I’ve had a glass cutting tool lying around that I’ve been wanting to use for years.

It turns out that cutting glass is a bit of art form. After a few false starts marking the lines and using a rubber mallet to try to break it I thought of using a tile cutting tool. Now that was much easier and most of the lines came out as intended.

Grabbing some scrap wood the mirrors were mounted like this:

From this angle you can see the rough edges on the mirrors.

The marked lines are to remind me which end to look in :)

Initially the mirrors were not lined up correctly and everything was slightly out of wonk. As per the suggestions in the linked article a few small wedges of wood leveled it all up.

So, does it work?

I’m not sure, is the honest answer. The focal point is quite narrow, you have to look at an object exactly the right distance away for the two pictures to merge together. I definitely don’t see the ‘inside out’ effect you are supposed to, but then I think it only works on certain shapes anyways. It is pretty neat though.

The next step would be to make a wireframe cube or pyramid and test it out on that.