Series

Inclined — the series

3 essays on one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
  1. nothing on the ramp images above its vanishing linehorizonuphilllevelcorrect from 10 cm, at 160 mm wideslope recovered 22.0000° against 22° built

    The ramp has its own horizon

    Every plane has a vanishing line, and a ramp's is not the ground's. Its uphill edges meet on a line above the horizon, and the angle at the eye between that meeting point and the same direction taken level is the gradient — 22.0000° recovered against 22° built, out of the picture alone, with no scale, no ruler and nothing known about the scene except that the ground is level.

    part 3 · construction
  2. horizoncorrect from 20 cm, at 160 mm wide44° across

    The line every nosing is on

    Nothing in a staircase points up the pitch. Every surface in it is level or vertical, and its picture has a vanishing point off the horizon all the same — belonging to the line the front edges of the treads lie on. That point is not free: it is collinear with the travel point and the vertical point, and the angle it makes says the rise-to-run the builder chose.

    part 4 · construction
  3. the ramp's vanishing linethe ramp's own pointthe horizoncorrect from 16 cm, at 160 mm wide3.43 m out at the sixth tread

    A measuring point for a ramp

    Stepping true distances along a receding line needs a measuring point, and every printed rule puts it on the horizon. On a 1 in 6.0 ramp the ramp's own point lands every tread to 1.2e-13 pixels and the ground's puts the sixth one-metre tread at 2.57 metres instead of six. A halfway construction separates the two halves of the mistake, and the wrong radius costs 0.083 metres of the 3.43.

    part 5 · construction

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