Showing posts with label scientific lineage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scientific lineage. Show all posts
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linda
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These beautiful cyanotypes of marine algae, or seaweed, are remarkable for two reasons. They're from the first book ever produced entirely by photographic means. And they're the first photographic works ever made by a woman.
British botanist and photographer, Anna Atkins' (1799-1871), created Photographs of British Algae—a landmark in photography and publishing—in 12 parts between 1843 and 1853. These come to us now thanks to the New York Public Library, owner of the most complete of only 13 known copies of Atkins' book, scanned and posted online in their Digital Gallery:
"The difficulty of making accurate drawings of objects as minute as many of the Algae and Confera, has induced me to avail myself of Sir John Herschel's beautiful process of Cyanotype, to obtain impressions of the plants themselves," explained Anna Atkins in October 1843.
Through her father, scientist John George Children (1777-1852) whose Royal Society circle included William Herschel and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), Atkins was aware of the group's experiments with photography. Talbot's "photogenic drawing" technique involved placing a flat object against a light-sensitized sheet of paper (sometimes pressed beneath a sheet of glass to prevent movement and ensure a sharp image) and exposing it to sunlight until the area around the object began to darken. Herschel devised a chemical method to halt the darkening and "fix" Talbot's silver-salt image—the basis for all photography until the digital era.
Hershel experimented with other light-sensitive metal compounds in addition to silver, and in 1842 discovered that colorless, water-soluble iron salts, when exposed to sunlight, form the compound known as Prussian Blue; unexposed areas remain unaffected and the salt rinses away in plain water, leaving a blue 'negative' image.
Atkins used Talbot's "photogenic drawing" method, arranging her specimens on sheets of glass for easier handling for repeat exposures, and adopted Herschel's blueprinting process, to generate the multiple copies of specimen plates comprising Photographs of British Algae.
I've posted only a handful of the 200-plus images Anna Atkins produced. You can browse the NYPL site to see them all.
Anna Atkins at 62 years of age in 1861.
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linda
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The seventh and latest installment in John Boswell's Symphony of Science. Great, as usual. Though surely he will manage to come up few more women thinkers next time? Twenty-first century, and all that.
(Ada Lovelace, first ever computer programmer.)
The entrenched refusal to acknowledge the many women, past and present, at the forefront of science led in 2009 to the declaration of March 24th as Ada Lovelace Day—an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Lovelace is today recognized as the world's first computer programmer. From Finding Ada:
The entrenched refusal to acknowledge the many women, past and present, at the forefront of science led in 2009 to the declaration of March 24th as Ada Lovelace Day—an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Lovelace is today recognized as the world's first computer programmer. From Finding Ada:
Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
From Rebecca Thomson at New Scientist's Culture Lab:
Today it's fairly well accepted that women are under-represented in both science and technology fields: for example just one in five of the UK's technology workforce are female.
But the negative nature of the debate, and the complaints raised within it, mean the considerable achievements of women who do work in the industry can slip under the radar. A recent piece by gadget magazine T3 neatly highlighted important contributions to the field made by women largely forgotten.
It included Mary Lou Jepsen, whose work on holographic video systems at the MIT Media Lab and in optics resulted in important developments in the fields.
One of her biggest achievements was her part in the One Laptop Per Child project, which delivered laptops to 1.5 million of the world's poorest children. She helped get the project off the ground by inventing display technology that is readable in sunlight, and working on the power system that made the laptops energy efficient.
Then there's this sadly enlightening piece in last week's The Observer: The Royal Society's Lost Women Scientists.
So how about a Wave of Ada segment to your next movement of the symphony, John Boswell?
So how about a Wave of Ada segment to your next movement of the symphony, John Boswell?
