  We construct an infinite family of 4-polytopes whose realization spaces have
dimension smaller or equal to 96. This in particular settles a problem going
back to Legendre and Steinitz: whether and how the dimension of the realization
space of a polytope is determined/bounded by its f-vector.
  From this, we derive an infinite family of combinatorially distinct
69-dimensional polytopes whose realization is unique up to projective
transformation. This answers a problem posed by Perles and Shephard in the
sixties. Moreover, our methods naturally lead to several interesting classes of
projectively unique polytopes, among them projectively unique polytopes
inscribed to the sphere.
  The proofs rely on a novel construction technique for polytopes based on
solving Cauchy problems for discrete conjugate nets in S^d, a new
Alexandrov--van Heijenoort Theorem for manifolds with boundary and a
generalization of Lawrence's extension technique for point configurations.
