From laboratory to mountaintop: Creating an artificial aurora in the late nineteenth century.

There existed a tradition of mimetic experimentation in the late nineteenth century, whereby morphologists sought to scale down sublime natural phenomena to tabletop devices in the laboratory. Experimenters constructed analogs of the aurora, attempting to replicate the colors and forms of the phenomenon with discharge tube experiments and electrical displays, which became popular spectacles at London's public galleries. This paper analyses a closely allied but different kind of imitation.

'An attempt to trace illusions to their physical causes': atmospheric mirages and the performance of their demystification in the 1820s and 1830s.

This article suggests that, during the 1820s and 1830s, Britain experienced a mirage moment. A greater volume of material was published on the mirage in scientific journals, treatises, travel literature and novels during these two decades than had occurred before in British history. The phenomenon was examined at the confluence of discussions about the cultural importance of illusions, the nature of the eye and the imperial project to investigate the extra-European natural world.