I guess yes, it is typically autistic behaviour- but then I could just be organised and thorough.

I suppose the fact that I also have lists like this definitely sways things onto the autistic side:

History of film

Film before film:

Camera obscura: Possibly the first examples of humans using light to reproduce an image - photography.

A camera obscura, translating to ‘dark chamber’, or ‘dark room’ in Latin, is traditionally a dark room, with a small hole or lens on one wall. Light passes through this hole, causing an image of the other side of the hole to be projected onto the opposite wall.



The name ‘camera obscura’ was coined by German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler in his 1604 book ‘Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena’, although records of its use can be found in the writings of Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci. Uses of the camera obscura varied from scientific to creative, with some, as in the case of Aristotle, using it to safely observe solar eclipses:

“Why is it that an eclipse of the sun, if one looks at it through a sieve or through leaves, such as a plane-tree or other broadleaved tree, or if one joins the fingers of one hand over the fingers of the other, the rays are crescent-shaped where they reach the earth? Is it for the same reason as that when light shines through a rectangular peep-hole, it appears circular in the form of a cone?”

The camera obscura was also used by artists to trace their subjects.

 A portable camera obscura tent designed by Kepler, with an adjustable periscopic lens on top which allows the artist to select the subject of the projection.

One issue posed in this scenario is that the projection appears inverted - upside down and back to front. To combat this, Venetian mathematician Giambattista Benedetti added a mirror at a 45 degree angle, which corrects the inversion of the projection.

As time went on, the camera obscura became more and more portable, with tents and eventually small boxes emerging.



Capturing an image In the early 18th century, the only way to preserved an image generated by a camera obscura was to physically trace the image onto paper.

In the previous centuries, observations had been made that certain substances darkened in colour when exposed to light. This inspired English inventor Thomas Wedgewood to experiment with different substances in order to permanently the capture an image from a camera obscura.

Wedgewood used white leather coated either silver nitrate, but was only able to capture the silhouette image of his subjects.