Ames room
Habitación de Ames
- Date
- 1934-1946 · confidence low
- Place
- Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States
- Credited to
- Adelbert Ames Jr.
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Ames built a trapezoidal room that, seen with one eye from a fixed point, looks like an ordinary cuboid, but makes two people of equal height standing in its opposite corners appear radically different in size. The illusion shows that the brain prioritises perspective cues over prior knowledge of objects' real size.
Sources give different dates: Ames designed his first 'distorted room' around 1934 and patented the design in either 1940 or 1946 depending on the source; there is no single precise date.
What it led to
- A classic tool in the psychology of visual perception
- Use in film forced-perspective effects (e.g. 'The Lord of the Rings')