JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post (Overall Post 5123)
Science heavyweight and Nature editor and founder J. Norman Lockyer wrote in 18971 a three-page summary of the recent experimental work of aviation pioneer Percy Pilcher. Mr. Pilcher (1866-1899) was rather more than a “pioneer”–he was an inventor and perhaps Great Britain’s premier experimentalist and visionary in flight at the end of the century—and made significant contributions towards understanding flight dynamics, though he would not live out the century, fatally crashing in a glider flight that was leading towards the launching of a powered glider of his own design.
The article was accompanied by a seven-part rapid-photo series of Pilcher in flight, and what caught my eye in this series were the small figures on the rolling hill under the glider. Enlarging the image quite a bit (the originals in Nature shows figures only 3mm tall) brings proto-post-Swedish-noir to mind, especially the very animated figure on the right and particularly for a famous scene from Bergman’s Seventh Seal (1957):
Notes:
Sir J. Norman Lockyer (1836-1920), long-time experimentalist/instrumentalist/theoretician who worked in astronomy and spectroscopy and was co-discoverer of helium (found in the atmosphere of the Sun).
1. (PILCHER, Percy.) Lockyer, William J. “Soaring Flight”, in Nature, a Weekly Illustrated Journal of Science, 12 August 1897, vol 56 no. 1450, pp 344-346 in the issue of pp 337-360.
And the full series of photos: