Punch,  50 (1866), 33.

Harlequin Aluminium; or, Jack and Pharoah's Serpent

C H B *

Genre:

Illustration, Drollery; Notes, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Illustrators:

C H B *

Subjects:

Military Technology, War, Railways, Human Development, Telegraphy, Electricity, Electrochemistry, Railways, Astronomy


    The text provides an interpretation of this complex illustration. Both respond to developments in the manufacture of gun cotton and poke fun at the corresponding rise of 'scientific' warfare. The illustration is dominated by a 'scientific Clown' (a metallic harlequin) who holds in one hand a hot 'scientific poker' made of magnesium, which causes the explosion of a 'scientific locomotive'. Around the feet of the harlequin rest a blunderbuss ready to be fired with 'scientific gun cotton', and a pestle and mortar, out of which the clown raises a 'scientific Baby'. Elsewhere 'scientific puns' are transmitted by 'Telegraphic Joe Miller' through the telegraph to a 'scientific Audience' of three, 'Fairies are scientifically suspended by Galvanic batteries', a policeman is 'blown out of a scientific "Armstrong" [gun]', and an 'Astronomer scientifically shoots the moon'.



© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020

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