extraordinary image of the other, and the composite may be viewed with the naked eye or through a lens of long focus, or through an opera-glass (a telescope is not so good) fitted with a sufficiently long draw-tube to see an object at that short distance with distinctness. Portraits
| Fig. 4. | ||
| Fig. 5. | Fig. 6. |
Fig. 4 shows the simple apparatus which carries the prism, and on which the photograph is mounted. The former is set in a round box which can be rotated in the ring at the end of the arm, and can be clamped when adjusted. The arm can be rotated, and can also be pulled out or in if desired, and clamped. The floor of the instrument is overlaid with cork covered with black cloth, on which the components can easily be fixed by drawing-pins. When using it one portrait is pinned down and the other is moved near to it, overlapping its margin if necessary, until the eye looking through the prism sees the required combination; then the second portrait is pinned down also. It may now receive its register-marks from needles fixed in a hinged arm, and this is a more generally applicable method than the plan with cross-threads, already described, as any desired feature—the nose, the ear, or the hand may thus be selected for composite purposes. Let A, B, C, . . . Y, Z, be the components. A is pinned down, and B, C. . . . Y, Z, are successively combined with A, and registered. Then, before removing Z, take away A and substitute any other of the already registered portraits, say B, by combining it with Z; lastly, remove Z and substitute A by combining it with B, and register it.
Fig. 5 shows one of three similarly-jointed arms, which clamp on to the vertical rod. Two of these carry a light frame covered with cork and cloth, and the other carries Fig. 6, which is a frame having lenses of different powers set into it, and on which, or on the third frame, a small mirror, inclined at 45°, may be laid. When a portrait requires foreshortening it can be pinned on one of these frames and be inclined to the line of sight; when it is smaller than its fellow it can be brought nearer to the eye and an appropriate lens interposed; when a right-sided profile has to be combined with a left-handed one, it must be pinned on one of the frames and viewed by reflection from the mirror in the other. (The apparatus I have drawn is roughly made, and, being chiefly of wood, is rather clumsy, but it acts well.)
of somewhat different sizes may be combined by placing the larger one farther from the eye, and a long face may be fitted to a short one by inclining and foreshortening the former. The slight fault of focus thereby occasioned produces little or no sensible ill-effect on the appearance of the composite.
The front and profile faces of two living persons sitting side by side or one behind the other, can be easily superimposed by a double-image prism. Two such prisms, set one behind the other, can be made
