Optical machines, prints and gentility in early America
Date
1999
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Zograscopes, optical devices used for viewing perspective prints during the late seventeenth century through the end of the nineteenth century in Europe, were popular instruments of visual entertainment and education in early America as well. All of the known American-made zograscopes and many of the important print collections from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries originated in the Boston area. Notable among these is a pair of unusual tambour writing desks fitted with a zograscope made by Edmund Johnson, a cabinetmaker working in Salem, Massachusetts from 1793–1811. ☐ This thesis locates the genesis of these devices among a small circle of gentlemen and their families in Salem and focuses on the efforts of a distinguished clergyman and one of America's foremost scientific instrument makers, Dr. John Prince. In his residence at the First Church of Salem, Prince restlessly tinkered with his scientific devices, instructed students in the methods of experimental science and entertained his guests with performances employing his various optical instruments. It was through these private displays of optics that he stimulated the genteel interest in amateur scientific experimentation in Salem, and thus possibly the creation of the Johnson tambour desks. Using Prince's innovative scientific devices and others with provenance relating to the Boston area, along with paintings, prints, diary entries and letters, this study attempts to recover the story of the zograscope in America and begins to explore the social contexts of these fascinating devices, which have disappeared from American culture.