The transit of Venus 138 years ago

In the year 1874 the French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen made one of the first photographic sequences that could be reproduced as representation of motion of a real phenomenon. In order to obtain the sequence he created an especific piece of equipment called ¨revolver¨ , the mechanics of the apparatus was possibly influenced by earlier devices like the phenakitoscope, since the film as we know it did not exist at that time.This particular invention represents an essential keyframe in the path of developement of cinema, that is the marriage of photography and kinetics.Jenssen developed and mounted the ¨revolver¨ to shoot a sequence of images of an astronomical event that happens every more than one hundred years.A few days ago the same phenomenon called the Venus transit, took place again, hundreds of rendering methods were used to obtain information about it, there was a live broadcast of the event to see and analyze images, such as those collected 138 years ago by Jenssen, this new images had also an stunning beauty.The broadcast from NASA did last more than 6 hours, but the good old Jenssen wasn´t mentioned, neither his amazing task.Then this is worth a reminder, armed with admiration and gratitude to that great man, as the poet Anibal de Antón said, for him to collect his share of memories in the payment window of eternity.extract from ¨ Storia Del Cinema Scientifico ¨