“So… we’re building a ghost.”

That was basically the vibe when we kicked off our project. Our mission? Bring Joseph Priestley — an 18th-century scientist most people have never heard of — back from the dead. Well, sort of. We’re creating an AI-powered interactive experience for the Priestley-Forsyth Memorial Library in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, and our job is to make teenagers actually care about a guy who’s been gone for over 200 years.

Our first week was a whirlwind of “who is this guy?” and “wait, he invented soda water?” The design team dove headfirst into Priestley research, and honestly, the deeper we went, the more fascinating he became. This is a man who discovered oxygen (well, he called it “dephlogisticated air” — try saying that five times fast), accidentally invented carbonated water while living next to a brewery, and was basically the 18th-century version of a controversial tech disruptor. There’s a lot to work with.

On the design front, we held our first brainstorming sessions and drafted up a question list for our clients — Jeff Johnstonbaugh, the Library Director, and Harry Lewis, our Priestley history expert. We needed to understand not just what to build, but why it mattered to the community.

Meanwhile, our programmers weren’t wasting any time. By the end of Week 1, they had a working pipeline: text input → local LLM → local text-to-speech. That’s right — you could type something, and a locally-running AI would respond in a synthesized voice. It wasn’t pretty yet, but hearing “Priestley” speak for the first time was a genuine goosebumps moment. We also got our hands on a Looking Glass holographic display and started the initial setup — because if you’re going to summon a ghost, you might as well make him look the part.

Click the photo for the demo reel!

The big takeaway from Week 1: the technical foundation is possible, the history is richer than we expected, and this project has the potential to be something truly special. Now we just need to figure out… everything else.