A Remarkable Lightning Photograph

The Daily Picayune de New Orlean (Louisiane), n° 313, p. 4, col. F ., Monday, December 3, 1894
s1Hassal, Peter: "1894 - ball lightning photo", Magonia Exchange, 21 mars 2008
L'article d'origine
L'article d'origine

Mr. Cowper Ranyard, the British scientist, who is making a collection of photographs of lightning flashes, has recently obtained a very remarkable one from an amateur photographer of Newcastle-on-Tyne. It is a perfect image of one of the rarest of electric phenomena?a clear-cut flash of "ball lightning." It is said to be the only photograph of such a thing ever made. The luminous spot on the plate bears a strong resemblance to the disk of a sunflower, being a plain circle of light, surrounded by numerous tongues of flame shooting from the periphery of the wheel in every direction. Besides the image of the main flash, the plate is streaked and speckled with many smaller luminosities, supposed to be pictures of stray points of electricity that have separated from the main ball.