Plaster Peaks, Photography, and the Spread of Scientific Knowledge

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Upon his return from setting up an astronomical observatory on Tenerife, a mountain on Spain’s Canary Islands, Italian-born/British scientist/Scottish Astronomer Royal Piazzi Smyth sought a compelling photographic image to help make his Report on the Teneriffe [sic] Astronomical Experiment of 1856 more compelling to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty (of Britain), and to circles of professional and amateur astronomers. So he turned to James Nasmyth, a retired Scottish engineer, inventor, polymath, and fellow astronomy enthusiast, to create a plaster model of the volcanic craters on the peak of Tenerife to be photographed and featured as the report’s frontispiece. After the circulation of his study in this journal, which secured Smyth’s reputation in scientific circles, he took the model and lantern slides of the plaster mountain peak on a popular lecture series. These images later were printed along with his journey’s stereo views in a book for an audience that wanted a simulated three-dimensional experience of the exotic Spanish island mountain Tenerife of its own for “armchair tourism” and scientific enthusiasm. This essay examines this early stereocard project, plaster models, and their scientific veracity as one way scientific ideas gained traction using a mass-friendly visual language

Computer Science · Intellectual Property Law