JF Ptak Science Books
Here’s another in this developing and fun series in the What-is-It? category. At first it reminded me of Renaissance woodcuts of various stages of creation anointed by a coy hand of the creator. This one though is late 19th century and has a definite highly au courant “Oriental” theme which so far as I can tell has nothing to do with the telling of the story of this object. It looks a little like a multi-horned phonograph (already in existence by about a decade at this point), and it also looks a little like a Chinese earthquake detector. It is surprising for what it actually represents, and it is a lot larger than you’d think, with the figure in the background definitely not to scale. Plus, it comes into the world a few years earlier than its gigantically famous counterpart, as though it had gone back in time…
What is it?
