Illusions
Ray Hyman believes that he was responsible for getting Andrus interested in optical illusions. Hyman showed him the Mach-Eden illusion using an index card. Andrus didn't seem interested, but came back to Hyman some time later and showed him how he had improved it by inventing an illusion of a house.
Speaking at the Skeptic's Toolbox about the importance of understanding optical illusions, Andrus said, "The point of demonstrating illusions is not merely to show we can be fooled... rather to appreciate that the human mind is in fact working correctly... we look at a parked car on the street, we assume that the part of the car we can't see is there too; our brains have to do this so that we can make sense of the world around us".
In 1954, Andrus created the famous "Linking Pins", a close-up illusion in which closed safety pins are rapidly linked together in twos, threes and chains.
Invited by long-time friend and fellow magician Ray Hyman, Andrus brought many of his optical illusions to the annual Skeptic's Toolbox, held each August on the University of Oregon's campus. Two of the more popular Andrus illusions the "impossible box" and "Oregon vortex plank illusion" are explained in this Skeptical Inquirer article.
In the months before his death, Andrus continued to invent illusions. His media were common household items: metal springs, rope, wire, cardboard, wood 2 X 4's and steel rods. Many of his illusions are viewable on the Internet and some have already expanded on his inventions.
Read more about this topic: Jerry Andrus
Famous quotes containing the word illusions:
“Swann was one of those men who, having long lived in the illusions of love, saw the well-being that they gave to many women heighten their happiness without evoking in these women any gratitude, any tenderness toward them; but in their child these men believe they feel an affection which, embodied in their very name, will make them outlast their death. When there was to no longer be a Charles Swann, there would still be a Mademoiselle Swann ... who would continue to love her departed father.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“We are all adult learners. Most of us have learned a good deal more out of school than in it. We have learned from our families, our work, our friends. We have learned from problems resolved and tasks achieved but also from mistakes confronted and illusions unmasked. . . . Some of what we have learned is trivial: some has changed our lives forever.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)
“When Wilson got upon his legs in those days he seems to have gone into a sort of trance, with all the peculiar illusions and delusions that belong to a pedagogue gone mashugga. He heard words giving three cheers; he saw them race across a blackboard like Mexicans pursued by the Polizei; he felt them rush up and kiss him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)