Autographs
One of the Earliest "Climate Change" Scientists Print Signed
JEAN DE CHARPENTIER, (1786-1855). Among the very first Climate Change Scientists, German-Swiss geologist who studied Swiss glaciers who studied how glaciers first formed, moved, or how they disappeared.
c. 1840 Large Mezzotint Print Signed, "Jean de Charpentier" in the bottom margin beneath a manuscript legend (in another hand and in French): "The Author of the ancient extension of glaciers through the Rhone Valley up to the Jura Mountains." This Print itself measures 11.75" x 9.5" on white paper stock measuring 13.75" x 11", laid onto a heavier card stock measuring 17.5" x 15". The signature measures 1.75" long, Choice Extremely Fine. Coincidentally, the image shown here is the exact one used on Wikipedia.
De Charpentier was one of the earliest advocates for the theory that glaciers once filled the Rhone Valley and even covered the entirety of Switzerland. De Charpentier based his conclusions after carefully mapping the Rhone Valley, looking for evidence of glacial deposits and movement. He was a trained geologist who directed the Bex salt mine in western Switzerland. An important and rare Signed engraved portrait of perhaps the first Climate Change Scientists.
In 1818 a catastrophic event changed his life focus when an ice-dammed lake in the Val de Bagnes above Martigny broke through its barrier, causing many deaths. Afterwards, he made extensive field studies in the Alps.
Using evidence of erratic boulders and moraines and drawing on the works of Goethe, he hypothesized that Swiss glaciers had once been much more extensive. These boulders, characteristic of glaciers, were strewn as if they were brought there by glaciers that no longer existed. Even so, he wasn't sure how glaciers first formed, moved, or how they disappeared. His ideas were later taken up and developed by Louis Agassiz.
See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-discovery-of-the-ruins-of-ice-the-birth-of-glacier-research/
Charpentier himself began a detailed mapping project, and in 1834 presented before the Swiss Association the results of his investigations, but again the Ice Age theory aroused much criticism. One of the critics in the public was a former student of Charpentier, named Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, a young, but respected palaeontologist by the establishment. Charpentier invited Agassiz to visit the city of Bex and surrounding mountains, to observe glaciers and test the theory of former glaciers covering valleys by own investigations.
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Black History & Slavery: (Lots 1 - 63)
Abraham Lincoln Related: (Lots 64 - 74)
Historic Autographs: (Lots 75 - 235)
Colonial America: (Lots 236 - 261)
Revolutionary War: (Lots 262 - 304)
George Washington Related: (Lots 305 - 306)
Early American Guns & Weapons: (Lots 307 - 318)