The Moon considered as a planet, a word, and a satellite

Description

Third edition, originally published in 1874, of this notable astronomical work by Scottish engineer James Nasmyth (1808-1890). Nasmyth made his fortune perfecting the steam hammer used in iron manufacturing, then retired to Kent and devoted himself to his interest in photography and astronomy. "He was a highly accomplished amateur astronomer, who designed and built his own telescopes and used them for systematic observations of the moon and the sun" (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Photography was not yet capable of capturing details of the Moon's surface, so Nasmyth made plaster casts based on his observations of lunar features and then photographed them under electric light to achieve sharp shadows. The resulting images were published in The Moon as Woodburytypes, a new photographic reproduction process that had been patented in 1864. "The Woodburytype process was one of the first successful photomechanical processes capable of fully reproducing the delicate half-tones of photographs.