This angle is now determined by the arc of glass between the screens; thus we get an angle in _glass_ the exact equivalent of the aperture of the objective. As the numerical apertures of these arcs are engraved on the apertometer, they can be read off by inspection. A difficulty is not infrequently experienced from the fact that it is not easy to determine the exact point at which the edge of the screen touches the periphery of the back lens, or rather the limit of the aperture. Zeiss, to meet this difficulty, made a change in the form of the apparatus--furnished a glass disc mounted on a metal plate, with a slot for the purpose of its more accurate adjustment.[17]
Professor Wheatstone’s remarkable discovery of stereoscopic vision led, at no distant period, to the application of the principle to the microscope. It may therefore prove of interest to inquire how stereoscopic binocular vision is brought about. Indeed, the curious results obtained in the stereoscope cannot be well understood without a previous knowledge of the fundamental optical principles involved in this contrivance, whereby two slightly dissimilar pictures of any object become fused into one image, having the actual appearance of relief. The invention of the stereoscope by Sir Charles Wheatstone, F.R.S., 1838, and improved by Brewster, was characterised by Sir John Herschel as “one of the most curious discoveries, and beautiful for its simplicity, in the entire range of experimental optics,” led to a more general appreciation of the value of the conjoint use of both eyes in conveying to the mind impressions of the relative form and position of an object, such as the use of either eye singly does not convey with anything like the same precision. When a near object having three dimensions is looked at, a different perspective representation is seen with each eye. Certain parts are seen by the right eye, the left being closed, that are invisible to the left eye, the right being closed, and the relative positions of the portions visible to each eye in succession differ. These two visual impressions are simultaneously perceived by both eyes, and combined in the brain into one image, producing the effect of perspective and relief. If truthful right-and-left monocular pictures of an object be so presented to the two eyes that the optic axes when directed to them shall converge at the same angle as when directed to the object itself, a solid image will be at once perceived. The perception of relief referred to is closely connected with the doubleness of vision which takes place when the images on corresponding portions of the two retina are not similar. But, if in place of looking at the solid object itself we look with the right and left eyes respectively at pictures of the object corresponding to those which would be formed by it on the retina of the two eyes if it were placed at a moderate distance in front of them, and these visual pictures brought into coincidence, the same conception of a solid form is generated in the mind just as if the object itself were there.