In a memoir on stress-induced birefringence (now called photoelasticity) read in September 1822, Fresnel reported an experiment involving a row of glass prisms with their refracting angles in alternating directions, and with two half-prisms at the ends, making the whole assembly rectangular. When the prisms facing the same way were compressed in a vise, objects viewed through the length of the assembly appeared double. At the end of this memoir he proposed a variation of the experiment, involving a Fresnel rhomb, for the purpose of verifying that optical rotation is a form of birefringence: he predicted that if the compressed glass prisms were replaced by (unstressed) monocrystalline quartz prisms with the same direction of optical rotation and with their optic axes aligned along the row, an object seen by looking along the common optic axis would give two images, which would seem unpolarized if viewed through an analyzer alone; but if viewed through a Fresnel rhomb, they would be polarized at ±45° to the plane of reflection.