Leonardo The Life and Unusual Ideas of Adelbert Ames, Jr. Author(s): Roy R. Behrens Reviewed work(s): Source: Leonardo, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1987), pp. 273-279 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1578173 . Accessed: 01/12/2011 07:53 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. The MIT Press and Leonardo are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo. http://www.jstor.org The Life and Unusual Ideas of Adelbert Ames, Jr. Roy R. Behrens Abstract-This paper is a summaryof the life and major achievementsof AdelbertAmes, Jr., an American ophthalmologist and perceptualpsychologist, who had initially wanted to be a visual artist. He is most widely rememberedtoday as the inventor of the Ames Demonstrations in Perception, the most famous of which consists of a distortedroom in whichpeople seem to shrink as they walk from one corner to another. This essay discusses the relationship of the Ames Demonstrations to anamorphicvisual art, and it documents various comments by perceptual psychologists and artists who were directly acquaintedwith Ames. Fig. 1. Inthe Overlay Demonstration (this is a reconstructionof onlyone part of theoriginal version), Ames removed a cornersection of a playingcard so that the card more distant from the viewer (the eight of hearts) appears to be less distant.