Author: Susan Gamble (sag24@hermes.cam.ac.uk)

Title: Gabriel Lippmann's popular colour spectra; and the aesthetic development of photographic spectral data in the late nineteenth century

Abstract:Gabriel Lippmann (1845-1921) won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1908, for inventing an instantaneous colour photograph. This photographic technique employed interference to record colour within a photographic emulsion without any pigments or colour separations. Lippmann first presented his theory at the French Academy in 1891 demonstrating his technique with a spectroscopic solar photograph; this succeeded in displaying the dispersion of sunlight into differing wavelengths of brilliant pure colour. This remarkable object, which could apparently recreate the sun back into light itself, was considered by the press to resemble "the prismatic hues of a Golconda-cut diamond". Examples of these visually appealing Lippmann spectra were in demand for exhibits and the Lumière Brothers produced and distributed them.

In this paper I will examine a display of photographic solar spectra selected for a Conversazione at the Royal Society, London, 1891. This exhibit placed Lippmann's jewel-like glass spectra alongside the photographic architectonic data of Charles Piazzi Smyth. For this urbane audience these scientific manifestations were viewed with Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers being audible by a wavefront of sound on the Loud-Speaking Telephone live from the Savoy. These exhibits explore the range of possibilities open to astronomers pursuing spectroscopy prior to the standardisation and minimalisation of this visual language. Here we can see the cultural and perhaps nationalistic approaches to this artful science, and the importance placed on aesthetic achievement over theory in the context of the Conversazione. For practitioners in this period such visual exhibitions were a vital means of dissemination in addition to the formal publication of papers.

Susan Gamble is completing a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University.