Modeling the unknown: how to make a perfect whale

Making a life-sized model of a blue whale is difficult. Making one to the exacting standards of 'scientific accuracy' is backbreaking. When, in the early 1960s, the American Museum of Natural History in New York undertook to fabricate a replica of the largest animal that ever lived, little was known about how blue whales really looked and behaved in the wild. Exhibitors like Richard Van Gelder guided themselves by old photographs, illustrations, tables of measurements and the experience of other institutions - as well as their own educated guesswork, and ideas of beauty, value and pride.