Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum described the left side of Lincoln's face as primitive, immature and unfinished.
When Lincoln was a boy, he was kicked in the head by a horse. Laser scans can't settle whether the kick or a developmental defect — or neither — contributed to Lincoln's lopsided face, Fishman said.
The scanning technique is usually used to create 3-D images of children with cleft lip and palate before and after surgery. Fishman teamed up with Dr. Adriana Da Silveira, an Austin, Texas, orthodontist who specializes in children with facial defects, to scan a bronze and a plaster copy of two life masks, owned by the Chicago History Museum.
Life masks were in vogue in the 1860s, said James Cornelius, curator at the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill.
Lincoln cooperated with sculptors to make them twice, in 1860 before his first presidential nomination, and in 1865, two months before his assassination. Lincoln probably did it for political purposes more than posterity, Cornelius said.
"It's the equivalent of TV face time now," Cornelius said.
