If the experience of wonder can lead to either a suspension of rational thought or toward a form of curiosity that fuels the search for knowledge, it is, without question, the second path that French scientist and balloonist Gaston Tissandier espouses in his Les Récréations Scientifiques. This comprehensive, 800-page textbook covers everything from the basic laws of motion and spectroscopy to botany and new forms of transit. Throughout, Tissandier weaves personal anecdotes and DIY experiments together with explanations of natural phenomena to infuse pleasure and amusement into the process of scientific learning.

Wary of “ingenious deceptions, intended to disguise the true mode of operation” and stressing the subservience of amusement to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, Tissandier epitomizes the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for scientific discovery in his desire to battle ignorance and make science accessible to amateurs of all ages at home. The reader is guided by precise illustrations, some of which were initially published in Tissandier’s science magazine, La Nature. One can learn to feel the spark of electricity using a ring of keys, revel in the fallibility of the eye by creating a thaumatrope with paper and string, and turn water into an entertaining fountain that juggles cork balls beneath a glass shade.

Popular Scientific Recreations serves not only as a practical textbook outlining countless experiments, but also as a history of scientific thought and invention. In the chapter on aeronautics, the human desire to fly is traced back to both ancient myth and history, as when Tissandier invokes the aerial ambitions of Daedalus and Icarus to discuss the earliest known “flying machine” invented by Archytas of Tarentum in 400 BCE. Archytas believed, after creating a wooden bird that could suspend in the air for a few minutes before falling to the ground, that his creation was endowed with an “aura spirit”. What was once thought to be supernatural is what Tissandier now understands, with the aid of his scientific method, to be a law of nature. This scientific rewriting of the supernatural narrative returns in “Chapter XIV: Spectral Illusions”, where Tissandier debunks popular ghost sightings and methodically concludes that “apparitions are spectres emanating from within the brain”.

Given this dialogue between science and magic, it is perhaps not surprising that Harry Houdini held a copy of Tissandier’s book in his personal collection of works on magic, now housed in the Library of Congress. A master of mechanical illusionism, Houdini wrote a book himself titled A Magician Among the Spirits, an exposé that sought to debunk what he viewed as the fraudulent spiritualist practices of his time. While the stage magician, unlike the scientist, was in the business of sustained illusion, both intended to strip the supernatural away from what, in their eyes, was purely natural.

Several different translations of Les Récréations Scientifiques appeared in English, including: Scientific Amusements (1890), Half Hours of Scientific Amusement (1890), and Popular Scientific Recreations (ca. 1883), featured here.