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Mach Bands
Discovered by Ernst Mach in the 1860s, Mach developed the phenomenon that has been coined "Mach Bands." The phenomenon occurs when the eye tends to see bright or dark bands near the boundaries between areas of sharply differing illumination (Britannica, 2023). Furthermore, Mach’s work was used in many investigations, like, the significance of phase information; receptive field structure; brightness perception, and others (Pessoa, 1988).
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Mach's Principle
One of Mach’s contributions to the philosophy of science came from his argument that the only plausible way to explain inertia was to assume that all the masses in the universe were somehow connected (Mach’s Principle). Mach’s hypothesis of inertia, which was developed during his 28 years in Prague, was later coined “Mach’s principle” by Albert Einstein in 1916, who would go on to cite Mach during the development of his general relativity theory (The Editors of Encyclopaedia, 2022). -
Mach Number
Just two years after his development of the Mach Bands, Ernst Mach left Austria in 1867 and became a professor of experimental physics in Prague (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998). For the next 28 yrs, Mach studied kinesthetic sensation and developed techniques to measure sound waves and wave propagation. However, in 1887, he established the “Mach number,” which was the ratio of the velocity of an object to the velocity of sound (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998). -
Mach's Return to Austria
In 1895, Ernst Mach decided to return to Vienna, Austria, as a professor of inductive philosophy; however, two years after returning, he suffered a stroke and retired from actively conducting research in 1901. Although retired, Ernst continued to lecture, write, and even publish Erkenntnis und Irrtum ("Knowledge and Error") in 1905 and an autobiography in 1910. Mach would pass away six years later, in 1916 (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998).