Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura at Cliff House in San Francisco

Camera Obscura is Latin for 'dark room'. Let light from a pinhole or a lens into a dark room and it will project an image of the outside world on the opposite wall, so Camera Obscura is simply a fancy name for a very simple device. They have been around for millennia, Aristotle was familiar with the principle. Uniberp pointed out this one at Cliff House. Cliff House is a famous landmark in San Francisco. Those parking spaces out front are free, but there are only a few dozen, and being as this place is famous the odds of finding an open one there when you drive up are astronomical. Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Caption from image: The Camera Obscura, which is seen at many seaside places, is a striking example of how rays of light can be reflected in a different direction by a mirror placed at a slant. In the roof is a mirror at an angle of 45°, and this catches a reflection of the scene outside. The rays are directed upon a magnifying lens, placed in the right position to focus them, and the magnified view is cast upon a white table below. The top containing the mirror can be rotated by means of a handle turning a series of gear wheels, so that an image of the view all round can be reflected upon the table. The Camera Obscura was invented by a Neapolitan physician named Porta who found that by passing light through a double-convex lens he obtained a brighter image

ADDICTED TO LOVE (1997) - Official Movie Trailer
This reminded me of this movie (Addicted to Love) where Sam the jilted uses a Camera Obscura to spy on his ex-girlfriend. The images from the device make a few brief appearances in the trailer starting at the one minute mark. The movie is absurd. It was, however, entertaining. Comedy and stupidity are blood-brothers.

P.S. How to type a degree symbol on Linux: Ctrl + Shift + u (this will show an underlined u) and then the unicode value (in this case B0 ) and follow it by Enter.