ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Moving Pictures: Projecting Crystallisation and Water Animalculae with an 18th century solar microscope

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

English Abstract

Solar microscopes are projection microscopes that were particularly popular in the second half of the 18th century. As I have already discussed, the popularity of these instruments can be related to the instrument's ability of meeting the cultural standards of the Enlightenment. This understanding benefitted significantly from the practice with two original instruments at the Deutsches Museum. In the last years, I had the opportunity of continuing to work with a reconstructed solar microscope - this enabled me to work on projecting both water animalculae as well as crystallizations. Wilhelm Friedrich Freiherr von Gleichen genannt von Rußwurm characterized the latter as " beyond doubt one of the most pleasant observations that can be made with a solar microscope."
In this talk I am going to present some of the experiences made in observing crystallisations as well as water animalculae. Based on these experiences I am going to expand the interpretation of the practice of the solar microscope with respect to the role of nature acting in these demonstrations.

Author

• Peter Heering, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Institute of Physics, its Didactics and its History