Uber, Art and Keysight
On my Uber rides, I talk to drivers who are artists supplementing their income while establishing themselves in the world of painting, drawing, sculpting or photography. Recently, I talked with an Uber driver artist about painting techniques and the history of perspective and use of vanishing points to create an image with convincing depth and an illusion of a 3-dimensional space. Paintings with buildings in the distance are typically achieved by drawing them much smaller than buildings in the front. Technically, orthogonals (parallel lines), the horizon line, and a vanishing point are the three components used to make objects in a picture look increasingly smaller as they near the vanishing point and give it a 3D look.
While there is evidence that ancient cultures like the Greeks and the Romans had figured out depth illusion, it was not until 1415 that Italian Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi painted the first picture with a vanishing point and true depth. Before that, paintings had a flat look to them.
Brunelleschi's famous "mirror experiment" demonstrated his use of mirrors to sketch the Florence baptistry in perfect perspective, and the mathematical calculation he employed to scale objects within a painting for that realistic appearance. This monumental discovery, was first used by fellow artists in Italy such as Donatello, Andrea Mantegna, and Leonardo DaVinci. German artist Albrecht Dürer used the perspective more than 100 years later. I cannot help but wonder at how long it took in those days for innovation to “travel” in order to get adopted?
How amazingly fast are those adoption cycles today. In Keysight, we not only use every opportunity to connect with industry leaders at conferences, consortiums and plugfests, we also make sure we are actively driving and fostering new innovations while leading and participating in over 30 standards bodies such as the 3GPP, PCI-SIG and JEDEC to name a few. While face-to-face interactions are very effective, we also ensure scalability, connection and collaboration with engineers all over the globe in a timely manner through a variety of digital channels. I’d like to highlight a few:
- EEs Talk Tech Podcast Series: Inspired by over-the-cubical-wall conversations about the changing world of electrical and electronics engineering, Daniel Bogdanoff and Mike Hoffman set out to create an electrical engineering podcast. Covering a broad range of topics from the basics of electrical engineering to the tough engineering problems of tomorrow’s technologies, Daniel and Mike bring in members of Keysight’s engineering team to provide their unique perspectives. Listen in the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month as Daniel and Mike take a break from their day job to talk about electrical engineering news and industry trends.
- Check out our engineering YouTube channels, a place where electrical engineers of all disciplines and ability levels can come to get problem-focused, example-based guidance to solve their toughest engineering challenges and stay up to date with current industry trends.
- Get the latest tips and techniques from Keysight’s blogs. Hear from our experts on the design and measurement advances to solve tomorrow’s technology challenges. Discover reflections, lessons, and insights from Keysight thought leaders on the technology and business issues of interest to today’s electronics industry. Whether you are connecting the world or the devices around us, making the world safer and more secure, or advancing technologies that make our lives and our planet better, we are proud to be your measurement partner. We invite you to visit often, subscribe, and give us feedback on topics you’ve found valuable.
- Join us every month for an hourly webcast on a variety of test and measurement topics as part of the Keysight’s Engineering Education Webcast Series. This global webcast series covers fundamentals topics such as signal integrity, spectrum and signal analysis or RF & Microwave Component Measurements. For our Asian customers, we will accompany the webcast with subtitles in Korean, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
I hope you enjoyed this Uber detour from innovators such as Filippo Brunelleschi in the 15th century to Keysight engineers today.
