http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392742
Presidential Makeover
02.19.06
The face on the one-dollar bill is not the real George Washington. So
say experts who are re-creating what our first president really looked
like in 3-dimensions. As this ScienCentral News video explains, they are
not only bringing him to life, but also restoring his youth.
Young George
Early in school Americans learn all about the young man who chopped down
a cherry tree and then confessed the deed to his father. That young man
went on to be the nation's first president and is often remembered for
his wooden dentures.
Most Americans think of George Washington as the stiff old man who
appears on every one-dollar bill. But U.S. historians say the one-dollar
bill isn't worth much when it comes to portraying their first president.
Jim Rees, executive director of historic Mount Vernon points out that
George Washington and the artist who painted him didn't much like each
other.
"You might say that portrait might be an example of an artist's
revenge," Rees says. "We've been working for years at Mt. Vernon to try
to give people a feeling of what this man was really like, and it's
gotten tougher and tougher and tougher… So we're building a huge new
education center at Mount Vernon, and the goal of it is to show what
Washington was really like. And we decided that the first question that
we had to answer was, 'What did this guy really look like?'
So Rees commissioned a group of scientists and artists to recreate
Washington at age 57, then age-regress him back to 45, and 19. Forensic
anthropologist Jeffrey H. Schwartz, the head of the team, says he now
knows a lot more about Washington than he learned in school.
But there was one problem: reconstructions are usually created using a
person's bones, but no one was going to give him permission to dig up
Washington. So, Schwartz, a professor in the departments of anthropology
and history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh,
had little to work with: a full-length marble statue and a bust of
Washington at age 53 that was believed to have been based on actual
measurements, some 2-dimensional portraits, some clothing, and his
dentures.
"I didn't have access to his bones, or to many of the things that were
actually part of his personal, daily life when he was alive," he says.
As Schwartz wrote in Scientific American, his team used the 2-D and 3-D
laser imaging technology of the Partnership for Research in Spatial
Modeling (PRISM) at Arizona State University, to scan the artifacts and
combine them digitally.
"I needed to figure out what his bones were like in his 50s, so I could
figure out how much bone and tooth to put back to make him 45 and then
19," he explains.
One problem was that although the famous face of Washington might be
legitimate, the body and hands of the full-length statue might well have
been created from the artist's stand-ins. However, because the team was
able to scan Washington's clothing, which was in the form-fitting style
of the time period, it allowed them to get a good approximation of his
body's shape and dimensions. So, the new reconstructions have
Washington's characteristically tall body and thin limbs.
Schwartz used Washington's dentures to determine the curvature of his
jaws, but he discovered early on that contrary to popular belief
Washington did not wear wooden dentures. They were in fact made of
ivory, as was common at the time, but were so stained from eating,
smoking and drinking that cracks may have appeared as the grain of wood.
Wearing them for the portrait on the dollar gave Washington that stern
expression.
"It was only later on, when he had full sets of dentures, that he had to
keep them in with his mouth because they had springs on them," says
Schwartz.
Once Washington had been digitally rejuvenated to his younger self, a
team at StudioEIS stitched together the images of each head and body and
created the three molds of the heads from which wax reproductions were
made. The wax Washingtons were painted to look extremely lifelike — down
to the pale skin with ruddy cheeks and grayish-blue eyes — and each face
was given a unique expression. The younger men were finished off with
reddish wigs.
So the three Washington models each provide a different, vivid snapshot
of a phase in Washington's life — the 45-year-old Washington had a more
relaxed face, and the 19-year-old had all his own teeth. Schwartz
himself is amazed by the results.
"Having lived with these images in my head for such a long time… seeing
them actually come out to be life-like is just… I can't believe it,
actually, it's wonderful," says Schwartz.
The cost of the project — one million dollars. The value of getting to
know the father of our country — Rees says, priceless.
The statues will become a part of a sixty-million dollar display at
Washington's historic home in Mount Vernon, Virginia.
Schwartz's work was reported on in the February, 2006 issue of
Scientific American, and the reconstruction work was funded by Mount
Vernon.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
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