How blue is blue? Naturally, someone built an instrument for that.
In the late 1780s, the Genevan naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure created the cyanometer: a circular scale of graduated Prussian-blue swatches—eventually 53 of them—held against the sky to assign its blueness a numerical value.
He carried an early version into the Alps in pursuit of something like “a sample of the Mont Blanc sky.”
Half scientific instrument, half travel accessory, and half elegant nonsense—which, mathematically questionable though it may be, feels promising.
#TheModernRaconteur #Cyanometer #Serendipity #ElegantNonsense