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Friday, April 11, 2025

We are back with another fascinating Wolmania. Shall we start with a soupçon of technology?

Imagine you want a portrait of someone but photography hasn't been invented yet, and you don't have the time or money to pay a talented artist. And you want it to accurately depict reality, so generative AI is out, too. Well, you could simply use a physiognotrace:

A physiognotrace is an instrument, designed to trace a person's physiognomy to make semi-automated portrait aquatints. Invented in France in 1783–1784, it was popular for some decades. The sitter climbed into a wooden frame (1.75m high x 0.65m wide), sat and turned to the side to pose. A pantograph connected to a pencil produced within a few minutes a "grand trait", a contour line on a piece of paper. With the help of a second scaling-down pantograph, the basic features of the portrait were transferred from the sheet in the form of dotted lines to a copper plate, which had previously been prepared with a ground for etching. One week later, the sitter received an etched plate and twelve little prints. The device but also the aquatint prints are called physionotraces [sic - ed].
“Description of the Physiognotrace,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-39-02-0352-0002. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 39, 13 November 1802–3 March 1803, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 408–409.]

So I guess the way it worked in practice was you used the physiognotrace to draw the outline of the person (or just the silhouette of their face) and then filled in the rest by hand. For example, here's Maximilien Robespierre in 1792:

Musée de Versailles, Inv. Dess. 857., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Item 2: a list

Anchors, ranked:

  1. Hall
  2. Spek
  3. Union
  4. Bruce
  5. AC14
  6. FOB
  7. Pool
  8. Danforth
  9. KLIP
  10. Navy Stockless
  11. Kedge-Admiralty
  12. Stockless
  13. D’Hone
  14. Byers
  15. ZY-6

Image via Sailhow.

Item 3: a media recommendation

The Cure - Faded Smiles

Item 4: word of the week

Ruritanian

How foolish, hastily-drafted, and overall stupid was that tariff scheme? It tacked a 50% tax on all Ruritanian imports.

Item 5: a photograph

Bear Bonanza. Sockeye salmon evade a hungry brown bear. After finding a vantage point to convey the struggle, Rice lit the scene by catching the sun at the perfect angle. This bear’s strategy of repeatedly swimming through a large school may not have been the best. "The fish always seemed just out of reach." Location: Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. (Adam Rice / Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Highly Commended, 2022)

See ya!

Thank you for reading. See you next week.

Published by:

Jacob Wolman

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