Before the invention of digital photography, I was already dabbling with pixels (picture elements). In the early 1970s, digitization was largely limited to newspaper illustrations and black and white TV images.
I learned how dots could create a picture (Richard Feyman explains). By manipulating the size of the dots, you can create a grey-shade gradient. The finer the resolution, the more real the image appears.
If you ruled lines across a photograph to create a grid, you could reproduce the image with an array of blanks, full stops, colons, slashes, zeroes, hashtags, and the @ sign using a typewriter.
In the 1980s, I purchased one of the first computerized photo-editing workstations. I would scan and digitize photographs and produce a kits with the instructions and materials to stitch needlepoint tapestries of family photos.
To cut a long story short, I also created a range of kits of famous individuals (Sergeant Pepper's Pick of People's Patterns). They were small, just 50 stitches by 70, and used a range of 16 shades of sepia wool. They looked just like their subjects.
It was incredible that anyone at all could 'fit' into my frame. I could create anyone in the world with just a few shades of wool and a bit of canvas. I could reproduce all of the people who ever lived and ever would live with only 3500 stitches! Moreover, I could capture them at every age, and with every facial expression, wearing every type of accessory, and sporting every kind of hairstyle! How the heck was that possible?
Let's do the maths (or as the Americans say, 'math').
In the first position of the grid, you have a choice of 16 shades to stitch. For the second position, there are also 16. So that's 16 times 16, or 256. By extension, the total number of permutation of a 50 by 70 stitch pattern is 16 to the power of 3500.
That is not 16 multiplied by 3500 (which would be 56 thousand), but 16 to the power of 3500. That's a really huge number. Most calculators won't handle the answer. They'll likely spit the word 'Infinity' back at you!
Which is wrong. The number of permutations is certainly large, but no number is infinite.
So imagine that set of tapestries. Most of the images would appear to be nothing at all. They'd just consist of noise, nonsense, a snowy screen. Only an infinitesimally small fraction of images would resemble anything at all. Nevertheless, that small fraction would include every Tom, Dick, and Harry - and every other name - from any angle, at any distance, with any combination of earrings, tattoos, piercings, and facial expressions.
Crazy!
Now, collect those images and house them in some gigantic gallery floating up in space (because there wouldn't be the room on Earth). Would the stars be far enough apart, I wonder?
Having housed them all - a good day's work - let's depart from the Douglas Adams Gallery at the centre of the galaxy. As we speed away in our rocket, it appears to diminish in size until it's merely a dot.
To cut a long story short, I also created a range of kits of famous individuals (Sergeant Pepper's Pick of People's Patterns). They were small, just 50 stitches by 70, and used a range of 16 shades of sepia wool. They looked just like their subjects.
It was incredible that anyone at all could 'fit' into my frame. I could create anyone in the world with just a few shades of wool and a bit of canvas. I could reproduce all of the people who ever lived and ever would live with only 3500 stitches! Moreover, I could capture them at every age, and with every facial expression, wearing every type of accessory, and sporting every kind of hairstyle! How the heck was that possible?
Let's do the maths (or as the Americans say, 'math').
In the first position of the grid, you have a choice of 16 shades to stitch. For the second position, there are also 16. So that's 16 times 16, or 256. By extension, the total number of permutation of a 50 by 70 stitch pattern is 16 to the power of 3500.
That is not 16 multiplied by 3500 (which would be 56 thousand), but 16 to the power of 3500. That's a really huge number. Most calculators won't handle the answer. They'll likely spit the word 'Infinity' back at you!
Which is wrong. The number of permutations is certainly large, but no number is infinite.
So imagine that set of tapestries. Most of the images would appear to be nothing at all. They'd just consist of noise, nonsense, a snowy screen. Only an infinitesimally small fraction of images would resemble anything at all. Nevertheless, that small fraction would include every Tom, Dick, and Harry - and every other name - from any angle, at any distance, with any combination of earrings, tattoos, piercings, and facial expressions.
Crazy!
Now, collect those images and house them in some gigantic gallery floating up in space (because there wouldn't be the room on Earth). Would the stars be far enough apart, I wonder?
Having housed them all - a good day's work - let's depart from the Douglas Adams Gallery at the centre of the galaxy. As we speed away in our rocket, it appears to diminish in size until it's merely a dot.
Hold onto that image, as we'll return to it before long.