#Augustus Meisel

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Science Saturday

Here are some wood engravings and a chromolithograph from a new addition to our Historical Curriculum Collection, two titles bound in one volume: A Handbook of Natural Philosophy and Elements of Sound, Light, and Heat, both by American educators William James Rolfe (1827-1910) and Joseph Anthony Gillet (1837-1908), published in 1868 as part of the 6-volume Cambridge Course of Physics series by Boston educational publisher Woolworth, Ainsworth, & Co. with the second title also published in New York by A. S. Barnes & Co.

The chromolithograph of the spectrograph was printed by the Boston German-American lithographer Augustus Meisel (1824-1885). The wood engravings (probably metal plates produced from the original blocks) depict, from the top, a hydraulic press, a vacuum jar, a stationary steam engine, and a steam locomotive. The last image depicts the interaction of waves:

It represents the forms produced by the intersection of direct and reflected water-waves in a vessel. The point of disturbance is marked by the smallest circle in the figure, and is midway between the centre and the circumference. . . . In like manner a great variety of sound-waves may exist together in the air. . . . In this way thousands of waves may be transmitted through the air at the same time without losing their individual character. The same case holds good here as in the case of water-waves; namely, that every particle of air is affected by a motion which is the algebraic sum of all the single motions imparted to it.

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