How Mirrors Are Viewed in the World
People started seeing their reflections in water and streams and someone became fascinated in the illusion and being able to reflect objects. The first mirrors were seen around 600 B.C., they were very simple. They were polished surfaces from natural materials that could reflect an image. After some time when people became intrigued by mirrors, they would create them with different materials like gold, copper, and silver. Mirrors started becoming popular in Turkey and Ancient Egypt. Afterwards, China started becoming interested in mirrors and they were made with metal alloys, a mixture of tin and copper called speculum metal that would be polished extremely to make a reflective surface and then colored bronze. Because these materials were very valuable, only the wealthy could purchase these high-end mirrors.
As for optical illusions, they are in favor of many people who like to trick people or like being tricked, or interested. Once people started understanding the science behind optical illusions, optical illusions started starring in paintings and other visual arts. The first optical illusions can be traced back into the 5th century B.C. when Epicharmus first presented the explanation of this interesting illusion. Epicharmus explained that even though our minds understand clearly, our sensory organs decieve us and present an optical illusion. Protagoras had a different opinion on this, to him, it was the environment that fools us and not our senses. The different opinions just confused people. Over time, different people believed different theories and different people made different visual art based on optical illusions and in the end, we are all fascinated in this mind confusion.
Mirrors are now all over the world, along with optical illusions. Mirrors are used in everyday life to look at our reflections, reflect other objects and optical illusions are used to fool people and get fooled. They are used in museums and art exhibits all around the world and people use them for different purposes. Now we have one way mirrors, regular mirrors, infinity mirrors, plane mirrors, spherical mirrors, etc.