A Refresher of the Original Bloch’s Law Paper (Bloch, July 1885)

In 1885, Adolphe-Moïse Bloch asked the following simple question “Is there a law describing the relationship between the duration of a light and its perceived intensity?” Based on a series of experiments using a Foucault regulator and a candle, Bloch concluded that “when the lighting duration varies from 0.00173 to 0.0518 seconds (…) the [visible] light is markedly in inverse proportion to its duration”—his famous law. As this law pertains to the more general and hotly debated question of accumulation of sensory information over time, it is timely to offer the public a full translation of Bloch’s original paper (from French) and to present it within the context of contemporary research.