Magic Eye's granddaddy was the random dot stereogram invented by neuroscientist and psychologist Bela Julesz in 1959 to test people’s ability to see in 3D. Julesz would generate one image of ...

And he demonstrated that by inserting depth into random noise: the random-dot stereogram: These random dots contain a hidden shape that you can see if you diverge your eyes to point each eye at ...

Random-dot stereograms are relatively simple versions of stereograms: they are sets of two images which only contain dots. Rather than forcing a cross-eyed or wall-eyed stare, the images are presented ...

There, Baccei saw one of the single image random dot stereograms and was amused by the visual trick. While it appeared to be nothing more than television static, focusing on it revealed circles ...

Image: An example of a random dot stereogram, this one showing a shark. / Fred Hsu In Nature, Charles Stromeyer, a vision researcher at Harvard, detailed the case of a woman, Elizabeth ...