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Penrose Stairs

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Galleries and Reading Room

Library

Shop

Café

Material relating to the "Penrose stairs", also called the "continuous steps" or the "impossible staircase"; a staircase in which there are four 90-degree turns that form a continuous loop with no discernible start or end points. L S Penrose and his son, Roger, first published the idea of the continuous steps in the British Journal of Psychology in 1958. They were inspired by, and in turn inspired, the work of Dutch artist M C Escher. Includes rough drawings and sketches, a notebook dated 1962 with further drawings and mathematical calculations, and photographs of a model of the staircase taken in the Galton Laboratory.

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Penrose Stairs

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