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The original meaning behind Joy Division's iconic 1979 Unknown Pleasures album cover has been unpicked in a new scientific article.
The mysterious black and white mountain peaks, immediately recognisable and immortalised in tattoos and clothing, are known to be a monochrome visualisation of pulsar data depicting a dying star.
The album's designer Peter Saville discovered the image in The Cambridge Encyclopeadia of Astronomy but as to who was behind that version has remained a mystery until now.
Scientific American's Jen Christiansen did some detective work and discovered that the image was inspired by the work of a PhD student who attended Cornell University in 1970.
Dr. Harold D. Craft, Jr. produced the image in his PhD thesis entitled, "Radio Observations of the Pulse Profiles and Dispersion Measures of Twelve Pulsars."
In a brand new interview with Scientific American, Craft recalls developing the program that graphed the illustration, explaining the images the computer made were then traced with India ink to make them stand out.
He also admits it was a suprise to discover his image had been used saying:"I went to the record store and, son of a gun, there it was. So I bought an album, and then there was a poster that I had of it, so I bought one of those, too, just for no particular reason, except that it's my image, and I ought to have a copy of it."
Check out the more information on the image on Scientific American here.
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