Model building with wind and water: Friedrich Ahlborn's photo-optical flow analysis

Around 1900, several experimenters investigated turbulences in wind tunnels or water basins by creating visualizations. One of them, the German zoologist Friedrich Ahlborn (1858–1937), was familiar with the works by his contemporaries but he struck a new path. He combined three different kinds of photographs taken at the same time and showed the same situation in his water trough—but each in a different way. With this first basic operation, Ahlborn heuristically opened up a previously non-existent space for experimentation, analysis, and recombination. He generated an astonishing diversity of information by adopting the tactics of ‘inversions’ in which he interpreted one part of the experimental setup, or its results, in different ways. Between the variants of the ‘autographs’ which he developed, he defined areas of intersection to be able to translate results from individual records into each other. To this end, Ahlborn created other sets of visual artifacts such as drawn diagrams, three-dimensional wire frame constructions, and clay reliefs. His working method can be described as a cascading array of successive modeling steps, as elaborated by Eric Winsberg (1999), or of inscriptions in Bruno Latour's words (Latour, 1986). By examining Ahlborn's procedures closely we propose conceptualizations for the experimenter's various operations. •Friedrich Ahlborn combines photographic recordings for fluid dynamics research.•As a research operation, Ahlborn interprets the setup and results in different roles.•Wire models and clay reliefs are less productive than various kinds of lines he uses.•Ahlborn's hydrodynamic investigations can be described as a cascade of models.•The translatability between working steps indicates the operativity of the artefacts.