The eponym Poggendorff illusion refers to Johann Christian Poggendorff (1796-1877), a German physicist who described the concomitant phenomenon in 1860, inspired by a drawing sent to him by the German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (1834-1882) of what later would become known as the * Zöllner illusion. The Poggendorff illusion is a *geometric-optical illusion in which the two ends of a straight diagonal line seem to be offset from each other when the line is interrupted by a figure with parallel vertical borders, such as a bar. The eponym Poggen-dorff illusion was coined in or shortly before 1896 by the German scientist Ernst Burmester. The Poggendorff illusion is commonly classified as a * physiological illusion.
References
Burmester, E. (1896). Beitrag zur experimentellen Bestimmung geometrisch-optischer Täuschungen. Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 12, 355-394.
Ninio, J. (2001). The science ofillusions.Trans-lated by Philip, F. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.