Camera lucida

A term from an Italian word meaning "light chamber", it was an optical device invented in 1674 by Richard Hooke and redesigned and patented in 1807 by William Hyde Wollaston. A Camera Lucida projects an image on a surface so that it can be traced. The technique is used by many commercial artists because of the ease of copying accurately and also because the mechanism allows for size variations. Sources: Ralph Mayer, "A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques"; Kimberley Reynolds and Richard Seddon, "Illustrated Dictionary of Art Terms" <br><br>A device much like an opaque projector, which replaced it, using a prism (lens) and mirrors to project the image of an external object onto a flat surface so that its image may be traced. Replacing the camera obscura, it was invented in the seventeenth century, but not widely used until the nineteenth. Literally, "lighted room." Artist David Hockney (English, lives and works in USA, 1937-) theorized in 2001 that many more artists than have previously been acknowledged ? Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867) for instance ? used camera lucidas (and other lensed devices), causing some controversy over whether this is true, and whether it was in any ways unethical.Also see copy, likeness, mirror, pinhole camera, Realism, representation, simulacrum, and simulation.