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The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Inventor [Hackaday]
When combing through the history of technological innovation, we often find that pinning down a given inventor of something can be tricky. [Foeke Postma] at Bellingcat shows us that even the Smithsonian can get it wrong when given faulty information.
The mystery in question is the disappearance of inventor [George Cove] from a photograph of his solar panel system from 1909 and its reuse as evidence of the first photovoltaic solar panel by another inventor, [Charles Fritts], around 1884. Questions first arose about this image in 2021, but whether this was an example of photo manipulation was merely speculation at the time.
[Postma] walks us through his forensic process to deduce the answer via image and records analysis. Evidence points to this being another photo taken shortly after the first, where the inventor had stepped out-of-frame. The photo was later misattributed in the writing on its reverse, and that error propagated all the way to the Smithsonian. We recommend heading over to the article if you want some tips for doing image analysis of your own.
If you want to dig further into the past, how about some primitive materials science? Sometimes the time is just right for something, and it crops up in many different places.