History of Binocular Rivalry
Binocular rivalry was discovered by Porta (1593, as cited in Wade, 1996). Porta put one book in front of one eye, and another in front of the other. He reported that he could read from one book at a time and that changing from one to the other required withdrawing the "visual virtue" from one eye and moving it to the other. According to Wade (1998), binocular colour rivalry was first reported by Le Clerk (1712). Desaguiliers (1716) also recorded it when looking at different colours from spectra in the bevel of a mirror. The clearest early description of both colour and contour rivalry was made by Dutour (1760, 1763; see translations by O'Shea, 1999a, b). To experience colour rivalry Dutour either crossed his eyes or overdiverged his eyes (a form of free fusion commonly used also at the end of the 20th century to view Magic Eye stereograms) to look at differently coloured pieces of cloth (Dutour, 1760) or differently coloured pieces of glass (Dutour, 1763). To experience contour rivalry Dutour again used free fusion of different objects or used a prism or a mirror in front of one eye to project different images into it. The first clear description of rivalry in English was by Charles Wheatstone (e.g., 1838). Wheatstone invented the stereoscope, an optical device (in Wheatstone's case using mirrors) to present different images to the two eyes.
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