University of Tartu

Graduate Student, Department of Semiotics

Filosoofia ja semiootika instituut

About

"We have also perspective houses, where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations and of all colors... We procure means of seeing objects afar off, as in the heaven and remote places; and represent things near as afar off, and things afar off as near; making feigned distances... we have also glasses and means to see small and minute bodies, perfectly and distinctly...

We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times... yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive.

We have also engine-houses, where are prepared engines and instruments for all sorts of motions. We have divers curious clocks and other like motions of return, and some perpetual motions. We imitate also motions of living creatures by images of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents; we have also a great number of other various motions, strange for equality, fineness, and subtilty.

We have also houses of deceits of the senses, where we represent all manner of feats of juggling, false apparitions, impostures and illusions, and their fallacies.

These are, my son, the riches of Salomon's House."

Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis, 1626