Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, pt. 3

Let’s get back to Lichtenberg the physicist.

Lichtenberg’s most famous physical discovery, in 1777, was the accidental discovery of electrostatic recording (i.e., the use of static electricity to record images). He built a large (six feet high!) electrophorus, which is a device that creates static electricity when a resin base is rubbed.

In the course of shaving the resin for the base, Lichtenberg noticed that the dust pattern on the base always reformed the same fractal pattern on the base after air disturbed it. But Lichtenberg was a writer; we should let him tell the story:

The occasion for the discovery of the phenomenon was the following: At the beginning of the spring, in 1777 [...] my room was still full of very fine dust of resin which had risen up during the planing and polishing the base of the instrument [...]. It happened [...] that the dust, lying at the base. [...] to my great pleasure formed at several places, small stars, which at the beginning could be seen only faintly and weakly. But when I scattered the dust on purpose with more vigour the stars became distinct and very beautiful and often looked like an elaborate and intricate piece of work. Sometimes there arose numerous small stars, whole milky ways and larger suns [...]. further on very pretty small branches, similar to those produced by frozen vapour on  window panes [...] (as translated from Lichtenberg’s Latin by Jürgen Teichmann).

These patterns became known as Lichtenberg figures.

Here is a website featuring several galleries of Lichtenberg figures.

Lichtenberg then figured out that the patterns could be preserved by taking a piece of paper with glue on it, and pressing the paper onto the powder. Voila! Photocopying was born.