Acknowledgments

During the near decade it took this project to mature, many institutions and individuals and various voices (some of them not just in my head) have provided invaluable feedback, advice, and much-needed prodding. The first nudge was occasioned by an invitation from Ann Smock to her colloquium “Music, Letters, and Moving Shadows” at Berkeley in 2010. It was in 2015–2016 that I drafted the first iteration of this study, thanks to a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Final development of the book manuscript benefitted from a Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota (2020–2023). Key members of the sounding board for this research were Juliette Cherbuliez, Michael Iarocci, Matthias Rothe, Debarati Sanyal, Ann Smock, Bill Smock, and Margaret Wall-Romana, who always either firmed up or redirected some of my flimsier ideas. For their generous invitations to talk about or publish preparatory work for this project, I want to thank Éric Méchoulan, André Benhaïm and Effie Rentzou, Nicholas Paige, Cécile Bishop and Zoe Roth, Jane Gaines, Noam Elcott, Thomas Elsaesser, Matthew Dodd, and the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota. Archival research for this project was conducted at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the British Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas, the library of the Institut de France, the Paris Observatory Library, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society of London, and the St John’s College Library at Cambridge University. I also want to thank Francis Oger and Anne Mayeur at the Société Astronomique de France for a visit of Flammarion’s observatory and Ellen Embleton, Dena Goodman, James Lequeux, Omar W. Nasim, and Beverley F. Ronalds for kindly answering detailed queries. This book got immensely better thanks to anonymous readers of the manuscript working with the University of Minnesota Press, as well as Elizabeth Ault and anonymous readers working for Duke University Press. I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Brandy Monk-Payton for asking whether and how an earlier version of this project accounted for the violence of racism. I thank my editor, Leah Pennywark, for her support and patience. Finally, my deepest bow to my life partner and uncompromising “schmeditor,” Margaret.