Principles of Cerebral Mechanics

by Charles Cros, Doug Skinner (Introduction)

A visionary treatise on perception from the extraordinary polymath Charles Cros―poet, friend to Rimbaud and Verlaine, and inventor of color photography and the phonograph Establishing the author’s standing as the inventeur maudit of his time, Principles of Cerebral Mechanics was first presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1872, but was not published until 1879, and then only in fragmentary form. Setting out to understand the mechanics of perception―the organs of which at the time were too small and inaccessible to be studied directly―Cros instead attempted to reverse-engineer the sensory organs. Whereas his previous inventions in the realms of audio recording and color photography had focused on technology for the senses, with this ambitious essay Cros turned to conceptualizing the technology of the senses rather than the transmission of color to the retina, here he instead attempted to conceive of how color was transmitted from the retina to the brain. By approaching the human brain as a “mechanism of registration,” Cros’ essay can be set alongside the groundbreaking work of such revolutionary figures who transformed modern vision as Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge.
Charles Cros (1842–88) was as much Renaissance man as he was poète maudit. A bohemian poet who drank with Verlaine and provided housing to Rimbaud, he also developed the comic monologue as a theatrical genre, and invented both the phonograph (which he named the “paléophone”) and color photography (though he failed to patent either before Thomas Edison or Louis Ducos du Hauron), among other such inventions as a nonmetallic battery and a musical stenographer.

70 pages, Paperback

Published August 24, 2021

About the author

Charles Cros or Émile-Hortensius-Charles Cros (October 1, 1842 – August 9, 1888) was a French poet and inventor. He was born in Fabrezan, Aude, France, 35 km to the East of Carcassonne.

Cros was a well-regarded poet and humorous writer. As an inventor, he was interested in the fields of transmitting graphics by telegraph and making photographs in color, but he is perhaps best known for being the first person to conceive a method for reproducing recorded sound, an invention he named the Paleophone.

Charles Cros died in Paris at the age of 45.

Reviews

[Dylan Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

An ambitious essay that attempts undesirable the mechanics of perception, despite being written in 1872 it is extremely forward looking especially in our current world with it's increasing technology advancement world that blurs the lines of mechanical engineering and biological existence

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a weird fascinating book

[Nick Bentz · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a curiosity than anything truly useful. Charles Cros must've been a nutcase. While I see the text's lucidity regarding cyber culture, and the reverse engineering of human thought with AI, there's a certain vapid nature combined with a highly mathematical framing that's just poorly explained, and feels standoffish throughout.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trying to explain perception, especially visual perception, in a mechanical way. An interesting and somewhat fanciful entry into the early science of perception, but it didn't really speak to me.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fig I & III were easy to follow, for me the fool.