JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
There haven't been that many entries in the scientific journal found-art category on this site, and it seems that mainly the artworks found/noticed have occurred in the Annalen der Physik, Scientific American, and Nature. Hunting for something else (as is usually the case) I found this lovely bit of design in Physikalische Zeitschrift, volume 26, 1926 (page 731, plate 5), illustrating an article by R. Seeliger on the electric arc, "Die Entwocklung des Lichtbogen". It isn't so much that the image itself is interesting for the sake of found-art--rather it is its placement, and the lack of almost anything else, and the pleasure of it being surrounded by pretty much nothing that makes this image so artful (or at least noticeable) to me.
There is a bit of an unusual history about the priority of discovery of the electric arc, though that notice usually goes to Humphrey Davy in 1802 and 1809. There was earlier work in 1802 by Vasily Petrov (d. 1834), but even at the time his experimentation was obscure and not much shared. I only mention this because of the line that leapt from the "page" of the Wiki entry for him, saying "...soon after his death he fell into oblivion in Russia", which seems pretty harsh to me, however true it may be.
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