Crossing cones of vision with balance and angle figures
Untranscribed mirror-script among optics, mechanics and geometry diagrams
This richly illustrated leaf sets several diagrams among blocks of mirror-script, and the bundle gives no transcription, so the text is described only by what is drawn. Its central figure is two cones meeting tip to tip at a single point, an hourglass of straight lines that gather from a circle at the bottom, cross at the point, and spread again above, the pattern by which an image is inverted through an aperture or the eye. At the upper left is a wheel or balance, a circle with a central hub and two weights hung symmetrically below it, while at the right a graduated quarter-circle sector and, lower down, a circle crossed by two diameters carry angle and construction studies. Later library stamps mark the page.
On this page
Two cones crossing at a point (inverted rays)
Straight lines rise from a circle at the foot of the page, converge to a single crossing point, and open out again above it, forming a double cone. The figure shows how rays passing through one point invert, as light does through an aperture or the pupil.
Wheel or balance with two suspended weights
A circle with a marked central hub carries a horizontal line to labelled points at each side, and two cords drop from it to small weights hung symmetrically below, a study of a wheel or balance in equilibrium.
Graduated sector and cross-marked circle
At the right a quarter-circle sector is ruled with radiating lines dividing its angle, and lower down a circle is crossed by two perpendicular diameters with marked points. Together they set out the angular constructions the text refers to.
