A Johann Gütle wooden polyhedral sundial,

Nuremberg, late 18th century,

Footnotes

The Nuremberg polymath Johann Gütle (1747-1827) would have been actively involved in this kind of promotion. Self taught in physics and mathematics, Gütle was an active entrepreneur who fabricated and sold everything from etched glass to cleaning and beautifying products (among them hair restorer and colouring) to lightning rods, including the first one in his home town. He wrote more than two dozen books dealing with, among other things, mechanics, electricity, surveying, and magic. He ran an active distribution centre for his books and products, and he was a travelling showman whose efforts to succeed in retailing had a component of entertainment--a significant fraction of his writings dealing with the diverting amusement of magic tricks. Despite evidence that he could justifiably be labelled a huckster, he was also a talented and versatile handworker mentioned by contemporaries as an important artisan and author (the poet Jean Paul, for example, alludes, with pleasure, to the use of his hair dye), and he made serious efforts to contribute to the scientific betterment of daily life. Chief among his accomplishments was the construction of the original Nuremberg lightning rod, which brought him considerable acclaim. At the same time, Gütle was decried in Heilbronn as a fraud for his unsuccessful medical applications of electricity, which had to have been viewed at the time as macabre.