[Jupiter Camera, Nashville, TN]

Edward Emerson Barnard worked in John H. Van Stavoren's Nashville photography studio as a nine-year-old. He had to keep this solar camera, designed to make life-sized enlargements on silvered paper from negatives, directed on the sun to avoid setting fire to nearby buildings. This meant spending hours awake on the roof in all weather. The poor quality of the paper, which was difficult to obtain in Nashville during early Reconstruction, required the immense lens to produce an intense solar beam.