"The Room With A View" is based on the ancient principle of CAMERA OBSCURA which is a Latin term for CHAMBER DARK As early as the 5th century BC, the Chinese writer and philosopher Mo Ti discovered that when light passed through a small hole, an inverted image resulted on the opposite wall. Centuries later, Aristotle also observed the phenomenon of light passing through small apertures. He was able to watch a solar eclipse of the sun by sitting in a dark room with a small pinhole in it.

During the first decade of the 15th century, Italian artist and architect, Fillippo Brunelleschi used a pinhole perspective device to understand what we now know as vanishing point and one point perspective in painting, drawing and sculpture. Prior to that, painting was flat and one dimensional, where objects in the fore and background appeared to be the same size.

The invention of photography in the 1830's brought with it scientific investigations into better quality optics and photo chemistry. While pinhole was still widely used, by the early 1900's it slipped into relative obscurity by the availability of cheap conventional lenses and cameras. Other than very specific scientific applications of the pinhole in physics and astronomy, pinhole photography remained on the outside of photographic society until a resurgence occurred during the 1960's and 70's. Young photographers and artists began to reject the sharp and realistic images embodied in the work of such people as Ansel Adams and the f:64 group of realists. "pictorialism" and personal vision, using cheap and varied cameras became increasingly more popular. Pinhole photography is now so popular, that many companies around the world are manufacturing pinhole cameras for the general public, as well as introducing it to young people as part of education in the arts.