MC Esher’s work did not change my life as it did for some people. But this week I have watched “Journey into infinity” - a movie about MC Esher that provided a fantastic overview of the evolution of his art. The film is based on more than 1000 letters, dairies and lectures that Escher wrote during his lifetime. We hear him speak in his own words, about his life, his fears, doubts, politics and work. The film travels to sites that were major inspirations for him. I think a lot of this correspondence was never intended for such a large audience, that makes the movie especially “intimate”. The film looks at Escher’s legacy and how his work even today inspires comic strips, advertising graphics, movies and video art.
I thought that initially, MC Esher has come up with “the impossible staircase”. However, after further investigation, it looks like the credit goes to Oscar Reutersvärd, a Swedish graphic artist, and independently and Lionel Sharples Penrose (1898 -1972), British psychiatrist, geneticist, and mathematician. The “impossible stairs” (referred to as “Penrose Stairs”) - is a two-dimensional depiction of a staircase in which the stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. This is clearly impossible in three-dimensional Euclidean geometry. The effect of the illusion is is that you see something which appears physically possible yet which you know is not.
I did not start this newsletter for marketing or commercial purposes. I just felt like I wanted to share all of the interesting things that I discover and research during the week. Being surprised and amused by discoveries one has a rushing feeling to share it with others. That’s why more often than not we “disseminate information”, rather than “hoard ” it. To my delight, I discovered I learned that the great computer scientist Edgar Dijkstra (1930-2002) wrote a newsletter for his colleagues in CS. He just photocopied and mailed it. In the early years he typed it up, like [this], but as time went by he made it a little more personal like [this]. Yet another proof, that some concepts exist in spite of technology.
In 1959, Dijkstra began writing a series of private reports. Consecutively numbered and with his initials as a prefix, they became known as EWDs. He continued writing these reports for more than forty years. The final EWD, number 1,318, is dated April 14, 2002. In total, the EWDs amount to over 7,700 pages. Each report was photocopied by Dijkstra himself and mailed to other computer scientists.
You can find his “blog” here: E.W.Dijkstra Archive
Further Reading: The Man Who Carried Computer Science on His Shoulders
Our senses are remarkable. They have evolved to enable us to accurately perceive a huge variety of things in very different conditions. However, occasionally our senses let us down, and we fail to perceive the world accurately. The resulting illusions give us great insight into how our senses work, and how they usually manage to do so astonishingly well. The illusions are well complimented by logical fallacies. This site is a trove of the most famous ones: The Illusions Index
