3 brèves histoires de L'Astronomie

On the occasion of "L'Astronomie" 100th issue, the EPFL Library invites you to journey through time at the heart of this magazine. An exhibition to be seen until August 2016 in the Rolex Learning Center ancient books display area.

In the preface of the first issue (1882), Camille Flammarion mentions "Thus our journal will be popular, but scientific. Our aim is not to teach children: we wish to converse with equals on matters of interest to all of us, and we do not consider our listeners, our readers, to be of a lesser intelligence than ours."

He then continues with a series of questions, of which we selected three that we decided to illustrate with excerpts from L’Astronomie and a selection of our ancient books.

• «Où en sont les habitants de Mars comme Météorologie et Climatologie ?»
• «Quels sont les nouveaux changements qui paraissent arrivés sur la Lune ?»
• «Les uranolithes feront-ils quelque jour tomber entre nos mains des vestiges quelconques d’une vie extra-terrestre ?»