Philip's Principles, or, Physical Science at Home (1898), episode 7

On the latest episode of the podcast with readings so interesting they put you to sleep, our seventh installment from the 1898 book “Philip’s Experiments, or, Physical Science at Home,” by John Trowbridge. 

This time, Philip and his father, relaxing at an Alpine resort in Switzerland, listen to a photographer tell an incredible story about making a camera lens out of ice in Alaska after he dropped his glass telephoto lens into a glacial crevasse. The photographer quotes an old optician: “Remember that your character resembles a lens. If it is well formed, it will give a beautiful image of the world in which you are placed. If it is badly formed it will turn even beauty itself into a hideous object.”’ The photographer eventually gets his Alaskan pictures, concluding that “His striving to conquer obstacles and to attain perfection seemed to lift him into a higher world than that in which his companions slept and dreamed like dogs.”

If you stay awake long enough you’ll hear how Philip and his father estimated the distance to a railway construction project by timing the delay between seeing the construction crew blast the side of the mountain and hearing it.

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