Talk:Pinhole

See Talk:Pinhole (optics). bd2412 T 12:30, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Historical claim
I'm removing the following line: "The earliest reference to the term 'pinhole' in reference to a camera aperture has been traced back to James Ferguson's Lectures on select Subjects, in the mid-Eighteenth century." The claim seems strange—pinholes have been used as camera apertures since the 5th century BC. The references cited don't seem to support the claim. Ferguson's book mentions an experiment using a pinhole to form an image, but not in a "camera", and he was certainly not the earliest writer on this subject. Interestingly, he also discusses the camera obscura, but the version he describes uses an actual lens, not a pinhole. The latter is the only occurrence of the term "camera" in the book. The other reference cited does not mention this book at all, and doesn't support the claim.

Additionally, it's kind of off-topic to talk about the earliest reference to the term "pinhole" in reference to a camera aperture, as opposed to talking about the first use or description of a pinhole as a camera aperture. By policy, Wikipedia articles are about things, not about the words that describe them. The topic of this article is pinholes, not the word pinhole. --Srleffler (talk) 09:38, 8 February 2014 (UTC)