This piqued my curiosity and is something well outside of my normal hobbies/interests (conservation of old books or antiques, physical library spaces in general, etc), so I was curious who started it. Turns out the answer is Dr Melissa Tedone - Lab Head for Books & Library Materials Conservation at Winterthur Museum.
She had been reading a book about arsenic-containing wallpapers in Victorian-era England, and connected mental dots while examining a book entered into the museum with a microscope. Pretty fascinating stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jH1niN3NpU the backstory starts around the ~1:40 mark
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This piqued my curiosity and is something well outside of my normal hobbies/interests (conservation of old books or antiques, physical library spaces in general, etc), so I was curious who started it. Turns out the answer is Dr Melissa Tedone - Lab Head for Books & Library Materials Conservation at Winterthur Museum.
She had been reading a book about arsenic-containing wallpapers in Victorian-era England, and connected mental dots while examining a book entered into the museum with a microscope. Pretty fascinating stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jH1niN3NpU the backstory starts around the ~1:40 mark