ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

When the makers fall silent but their instruments keep speaking: reconstructing the biography of J.G. Hofmann’s rangefinder preserved in the Deutsches Museum

• In Event: Shifting Perspectives: Hands on Instruments Approaches (with Gloves) to Writing a History of Scientific Practices II

English Abstract

This presentation explores how a scientific instrument can continue to “speak” even when its maker has long fallen silent. The object at the centre of this study is a compact nineteenth-century rangefinder signed “J.G. Hofmann Paris”, now preserved in the Founding Collection of the Deutsches Museum.
Although little documentation survives, the instrument itself—its structure, materials, inscriptions, traces of wear, missing components, and later inventory marks—offers a remarkably rich set of clues that allow us to reconstruct its functioning, intended use, and a plausible biography of the device.
A comparison with other dated specimens enables a tentative dating for the Munich rangefinder. Additionally, archival sources such as trade almanacs, advertisements, museum inventories, and a letter from Wilhelm Eisenlohr to Carl August von Steinheil help us situate the instrument within Parisian optical production around 1860 and allow us to sketch a reasonable trajectory leading from Hofmann’s workshop to the Deutsches Museum.
This study thus seeks to show what new horizons may open when we allow an object itself to guide our historical questions. The story of Hofmann’s small rangefinder offers an example of how material culture approaches can reveal networks of makers, users, and institutions—and how, even when the makers fall silent, their instruments may still have much to say.

Author

• Luisa Lovisetti, Department of Physics “Aldo Pontremoli”, University of Milan