Anamorphic images

Anamorphic images are images of objects which have been distorted in some way so that only by viewing them from some particular direction or in some particular optical surface do they become recognizable. Artists have been fascinated with these transformations since the 16th century, but there seems to be no modern explication of the mathematics of these transforms. In this paper we describe the most common of the anamorphic images found in art and derive the transform equations for plane, conical, and cylindrical cases. With these equations it is possible to analyze early anamorphs, and with computation to create modern ones with ease. (C) 2000 American Association of Physics Teachers.