Paradoxically and in historically circular twist, the reason that the glass sea creatures sold to Harvard were to prove so crucial was because the University would soon, and did, open its new Botanical Museum in 1888. Given in effect a series of empty rooms and invited to make a museum for teaching botany, the first director, George Lincoln Goodale, faced a familiar problem. At that time, Harvard was the global center of botanical study and, as such, Prof. Goodale wanted the best for his students, but the only used method was showcasing pressed and carefully labeled botanical specimens – a methodology that offered a twofold problem: being pressed, the specimens were two-dimensional and tended to lose their color. Hence they were hardly the ideal teaching tools. In fact, Goodale's problem was essentially the same as Reichenbach's had been, but applied to botany rather than marine biology for, in both cases, the practiced method of exhibition robbed the specimens of color and three-dimensional form.