Principles of Cerebral Mechanics - Charles Cros

Principles of Cerebral Mechanics by Charles Cros / ISBN 9781939663795 / small 75-page paperback with flaps from Wakefield Press *** A visionary treatise on perception from the extraordinary polymath Charles Cros―poet, friend to Rimbaud and Verlaine, and inventor of color photography and the phonograph Establishing the author’s standing as the inventeur maudit of his time, Principles of Cerebral Mechanics was first presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1872, but was not published until 1879, and then only in fragmentary form. Setting out to understand the mechanics of perception―the organs of which at the time were too small and inaccessible to be studied directly―Cros instead attempted to reverse-engineer the sensory organs. Whereas his previous inventions in the realms of audio recording and color photography had focused on technology for the senses, with this ambitious essay Cros turned to conceptualizing the technology of the senses themselves: rather than the transmission of colo