On Sat, 14 May 2005 08:27:57 +0100, Ian White GM3SEK
wrote:

My lords, ladies and gentlemen, the 2005 "Interflora" Award for Flowery
Phrasing on the Internet goes to... well, who else?

Richard, you may step up and collect - but PLEASE don't make a speech

Hi Ian,

But the credit goes to the attributed author, John Donne (Ask not for
whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee).

OK. The allusion provided by Donne in his poem "The Ecstasy" of eye
beams illustrates a concept held back then that light emanated from
the eye to illuminate what was seen. Or perhaps more abstractly
(given the same light did not appear during night), what we see was a
function of our eye projecting its ability to see. Hence,
Elizabethans (because art celebrates what was; not what is) and
earlier society proposed this characteristic of the eye-beam.

This is NOT currently a commonly accepted notion of how vision works;
however, if we were to proceed as if it were, then the conjugate
mirror would return that beam to its source (this is the
characteristic of the mirror, from Jim Kelley's link which provided
this coverage). This is a conjugation of the conjugate mirror.
Hence, the mirror would illuminate the eye with the eye's own beam.
In a clinical sense, you would see the interior of your eye
(Optometrists have a device that does this).

Returning to how vision does work, one is not going to perceive any
illumination simply because the eye offers none in the first place.
Further, the eye is not going to perceive any other illumination
either because the conjugate mirror returns all illumination to its
source. The eye is excluded of ANY illumination (as I offered in the
"effluvium") and the appearance of the mirror is absolute black.
There is nothing to see. Several provided this answer, but not the
why (blind luck).

Now, to continue on to the reference of the "evil eye." It was also
predicated on the concept of eye beams. It was thought that people
could harmonize their spirits by their eye beams joining. This also
introduced the jeopardy of joining your eye beams with some one
sinister. This would have the effect of your possibly being mastered
by "the other." So, as protection against the evil eye, you would
repulse "the other" with the sign of your forefinger and little finger
held up from your fist and your fist held between you and "the other."
The function of this sign was that the fork of the two fingers would
entwine "the other's" eye beam before it got to your eyes. It would
entwine it in a lemniscate (figure 8) winding forever between these
fingers, and thus your protection against the evil eye.

We might propose that the modern solution would have been a conjugate
mirror.

To cap the simplicity of the solution, the conjugate is found in the
angle of reflection always being the same as the angle of coincidence
(or the inverse - conjugate - of the natural angle of reflection).

For those who actually visit Jim's link, I would add that this
citation further stipulates that conjugate mirrors that scientists
offer for experimental verification presume that the depth of the
mirror surface is greater (in wavelength dimension) than the pulse of
light that will be conjugately reflected. This purpose is to perform
the other properties of phase conjugation (hence the name) and leads
to discussion of "reversing time" which is not meant in the sense of
the classic TV program of the 60s "The Time Tunnel" (which was a
pretty crummy classic - I use the term ironically).

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC