Representing difference: Ernst Mach and Peter Salcher's ballistic-photographic experiments.
Photographs of the processes taking place in the air around a flying bullet, which the Austrian physicists Ernst Mach and Peter Salcher published in 1887, very soon became emblematic for the power of scientific photography over the human eye. But the main advantage was merely that photography allowed the phenomena in question to be recorded. This permitted a new experimental approach. The scientists were therefore not visualising phenomena by studying a single photograph but by comparing the differences between several.
Hoffmann
Christoph
C
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstrasse 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
D001317:Austria; D005389:Firearms / Q000266:history; D044709:Forensic Ballistics / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D010781:Photography / Q000266:history*