"If I'm sitting next to a swimming pool, and somebody dives in - and she's not too pretty, so I can think of something else - I think of the waves and things that have formed in the water. And, uh, when there's lots of people have dived in the pool there's a very great choppiness of all these waves all over the water and to think that it's possible, maybe, that in those waves there's a clue as to what's happening in the pool. That some sort of insect or something with sufficient cleverness could sit in the corner of the pool and just be disturbed by the waves, and by the nature of the irregularities and bumping of the waves have figured out who jumped in where and when and where what's happening all over the pool. And that's what we're doing when we're looking at something. Uh, the light that comes out is ... is waves, just like in the swimming pool except in three dimensions instead of the two dimensions of the pool it's they're going in all directions. And we have a eighth of an inch black hole into which these things go ... which, uh, is particularly sensitive to the parts of the waves that are coming in a particular direction it's not particularly sensitive when they're coming in at the wrong angle which we say is from the corner of our eye. And if we want to get more information from the corner of our eye we swivel this ball about so that the hole moves from place to place. Then ... uh, it's quite wonderful that we can see ... figure out so easy. That's really because the light waves are easier than the ... the waves in the water are a little bit more complicated it would have been harder for the bug than for us but it's the same idea. Figure out what the thing is that we're looking at at a distance."
Transcribed from footage included in the documentary "The Last Journey of
a Genius" (1989) by Christopher Sykes,
a BBC TV production in
association with WGBH Boston and Coronet/MTI Film and Video.