Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen

333 Pages·2015·1.93 MB·English

by  Philip Ball

Invisible

Invisible
The Dangerous Allure
of the Unseen
Philip Ball
The University of Chicago Press
chicago
philip ball is a freelance writer who lives in London. His many books
include Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything and Serving the
Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler, both also published by
the University of Chicago Press.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
© 2015 by Philip Ball
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-23889-0 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-23892-0 (e-book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226238920.001.0001
Originally published by Bodley Head, 2013.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Ball, Philip, 1962– author.
Invisible : the dangerous allure of the unseen / Philip Ball.
pages : illustrations ; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-226-23889-0 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-226-23892-0 (e-book) 1. Invisibility. I. Title.
QC406.B35 2015
535’.1—dc23
2014035709
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface xi
1 Why We Disappear 1
2 Occult Forces 9
3 Fear of Obscurity 52
4 Rays that Bridge Worlds 90
5 Worlds Without End 135
6 All in the Mind 154
7 The People Who Can’t Be Seen 168
8 Vanishing Point 199
9 Bedazzled and Confused 229
10 Unseen at Last? 255
Notes 283
Bibliography 301
Index 311

Illustrations
p.36 The title page of Hocus Pocus Junior.
p.41 X-rays in Victorian illusionism.
p.42 Mesmer’s ‘animal magnetism’ treatment.
p.43 M esmer’s baquet. Image: Eric Le Roux: University Claude
Bernard Lyon 1/ History Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy.
p.46 Eliphas Lévi (1810–1875).
p.47 Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891).
p.53 David Garrick as Hamlet, after a painting by Benjamin Wilson,
1756.
p.60 A caricature of the Cock Lane Ghost.
p.69 The Cottingley fairies.
p.72 The editor of Waverley Magazine Moses A. Dow with the spirit
of his daughter.
p.74 H ippolyte Baraduc’s wife minutes after her death, allegedly
showing her soul departing. From Hereward Carrington’s The
Problems of Psychical Research Experiments and Theories in the Realm
of the Supernormal (1921).
p.75 The camera obscura, from Athanasius Kircher’s Great Art of
Light and Shadow (1646).
p.76 The magic lantern, from Kircher.
p.77 A magic lantern projecting a demon, from Giovanni Fontana,
Bellicorum instrumentorum liber, Cod. Icon. 242 (Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich), 1420–1440, fol. 70r. Image: BibliOdyssey,
peacay.
p.78 Advertisement for Paul Philidor’s Phantasmagoria show.
p.79 Robertson’s magic-lantern light show.
p.80 Pepper’s ghost.
p.82 George Méliès’ Le Manoir du diable (The Haunted Castle) (1896).
p.87 His Master’s Voice: the dead master speaks to his dog. Image:
Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett Collection.
p.92 X-ray photograph of Wilhelm Röntgen’s wife, Anna. Image:
Wellcome Medical Library.
p.103 Sir William Crookes (1832–1919). Image: Wellcome Medical
Library.
p.109 A radiometer made by William Crookes and Charles
Gimingham.
p.112 Crookes’s ‘dark space’ in a Geissler discharge tube.
p.116 A torsion balance used by Loránd Eötvös’s assistant Dezsö
Pekár.
p.118 The Victorian medium Florence Cook (c.1856–1904). Image:
Mary Evans Picture Library/John Cutten.
p.123 Atoms of gold, sodium and radium as depicted in Occult
Chemistry (1908).
p.126 G. A. Smith’s The X-Rays (1897).
p.175 Reflection, refraction and absorption of light by opaque and
transparent objects.
p.176 Reflection and refraction by a transparent object.
p.176 Matching the refractive index of oil with that of a glass rod
dipped into it. Photo: George Roberts.
p.183 Griffin confronts the villagers of Iping in The Invisible Man
(1933).
p.188 Abbott and Costello meet the Invisible Man.
p.193 The Invisible Woman’s secret unveiled.
p.195 The Vanishing Lady, from Albert Hopkins’s 1898 book of stage
magic.
p.201 Robert Hooke’s microscopic images of mould, snowflakes, a
flea and a fly’s eyes.
p.205 A deep-sea hydrothermal worm. Image: courtesy of FEI (www.
FEI.com), taken by Philippe Crassous.
p.212 The atom as an invisible world, from a popular book of 1956.
p.213 Atoms as ‘little people’ in Lucy Rider Meyer’s Real Fairy Folks,
and a modern anthropomorphic image of molecules. Images:
(left) courtesy of the Othmer Library of Chemical History,
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia; (right) reproduced
courtesy of Roz Chast.
p.219 Tobacco mosaic virus, herpes simplex virus, and a bacteriophage.
Images: (left) Hans-W. Ackermann, Department of Microbiology,
Medical School, Laval University, Quebec, Canada; (centre)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Dr Fred Murphy
and Sylvia Whitfield; (right) Reo Kometani and Shinji Matsui,
University of Hyogo.
p.221 a: The microscopic ‘pond life’ of London, from Punch, 11 May
1850. b: The cholera microbe in the Parisian Le Grelot, 1884.
c: Poster from a Parisian theatre in 1883. d: ‘Germs’ depicted
in current teaching resources by the Government of Western
Australia Departments of Health and Education.
p.224 A n artist’s impression of a nanobot removing plaque from the
walls of a human blood vessel. Image: Hybrid Medical
Animation/Science Photo Library.
p.225 Fantastic Voyage (1966).
p.226 A bug on microscopic gears of a microelectromechanical device
carved into a silicon chip. Image: courtesy of Sandia National
Laboratories, SUMMiTTM Technologies, www.mems.sandia.
gov.
p.227 The Michigan Micro Mote.
p.230 T he ‘invisibility cloaks’ of Susumu Tachi. Images: courtesy of
Susumu Tachi, University of Tokyo.
p.230 L iu Bolin painted to vanish into the background. Images: cour-
tesy of Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin.
p.231 A n artist’s impression of Tower Infinity in South Korea. Images:
GDS Architects.
p.233 The chameleon. Image: Ales Kocourek.
p.233 A flatfish, almost invisible against the sandy sea bed. Image:
Moondigger.
p.235 S tacked plates of the reflectin protein in iridophore cells create
tunable reflective colours in squid. Image: courtesy of Rajesh
Naik, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
p.235 A moth camouflaged against tree bark. Image: © Marc Parsons/
Dreamstime.com.
p.237 T he zebra may be hidden among light-coloured vegetation,
but in grassland the stripes have no camouflaging effect.
Images: (left) Rei; (right) Gusjer.
p.238 ‘ Differential blending’ of a patchy or mottled animal, from
Hugh Cott’s Adaptive Coloration in Animals.