WEBVTT - Optography: Image in a Dead Man's Eye 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:21.640 This incredible. What's the last thing? Increase? It's a funny's 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:26.040 inspecting the image just being contained in the fluid exactly. 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:30.680 The treat's visual memory is located nothing it's brain, but 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:40.519 in the eye itself. Welcome to stuff to Blow your 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:49.280 Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey you welcome 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:50.960 to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.320 Lamb and I'm Christian Seger. Hey, Robert, if you were murdered, 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:57.480 would you mind if I scooped your eyeball out, cut 0:00:57.480 --> 0:00:59.960 it in half, dipped it in some chemicals, and then 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:02.279 looked at that to see if I could find the 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.679 image of your murderer on your eye. Only if you 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:09.360 had the professionals like the late great Christopher Lee and 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.479 Peter Cushing doing the investigating as they as they do 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:16.160 in this clip that we just heard from the nineteen 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.559 seventy two horror film Horror Express. I have to confess 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:22.000 I've never seen this movie, So tell me and tell 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.880 the audience what is what's it about? Well? This is yeah, 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.520 this is the fun wild little film that uh it 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:33.040 is shockingly public domain property at the moment. You can 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:35.920 find it on on YouTube and and pretty much anywhere 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.120 that you're going to grab your your horror cinema. It's 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.200 a it has a shockingly star studded cast. You got 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.480 Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and not in our audio clip, 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:49.680 Telly savalis as a as a Cossack captain. Wow with 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:52.640 without any attempt at at a Russian act center anything, 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:54.600 just straight up tell Y savalas. So it's just Ko 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:59.480 Jack pretending like he's a Cossack captain on this train. Yeah, exactly. 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:02.040 And there is a oh god goodness that they're all 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.400 these additional character actors as well. There is a there's 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.040 a respute and sue character uh that's walking around. It 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:12.560 all takes place on a Trans Siberian Express from China 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.920 to Moscow, and it concerns this uh, this alien possessed, 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:22.080 reanimated prehistoric commented. They just starts running amuck, draining the 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.160 memories from its victims, leaving them with milky white eyes. 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:27.760 And there's this fabulous scene which we we just heard 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.880 the audio from where the scientists use a microscope on 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:34.000 the creature's eye fluid to reveal its final sites, as 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.880 well as a kind of hilarious glimpse at the prehistoric world. 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:42.000 But so that may sound totally ridiculous in the scheme 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:44.239 of this film, and and it did when I first 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:46.399 saw it. I first saw this, I think in college, 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.079 and I had no idea that it had any connection 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:51.560 to the rational world. I was like, what kind of 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:54.720 dove for these guys on when they wrote this, because 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:58.280 this is the most crazy pseudo scientific idea I've ever heard. 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:01.520 And it turns out that it is that actually over 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.360 two hundred year old theory that still floats around occasionally, 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.880 though we mainly just see it in our film nowadays. 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:12.120 But man, it connected to forensic science for almost a 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:16.040 century and to the criminal mind in terms of what 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.680 they needed to do to get away with their murderous crimes. Yeah, 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:21.600 and and of course as well get into the topic 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:25.079 will explore to what extent it was it was tied 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.880 to forensic science, It has a it has an interesting 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:33.480 history there. Essentially it is it is still a pseudoscience, um. 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.840 But you know, pseudoscience often enters our world where magic fails, 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:41.240 us seeming to make the impossible possible via the invocation 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:46.160 of actual scientific and technological marvels. And and so today 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:49.880 what we're discussing is is unmistakably necromantic. You know, it's 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:53.960 it's communicating with the dead, but it's wrapped up in 0:03:54.320 --> 0:04:01.000 these nineteenth century technological advancements, and uh, it's extremely fascinating. 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:04.160 I can't believe it's taking me this long to finally 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:09.200 get to the the actual science behind this ridiculous movie. Yeah, 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.800 it's it's fun, but it's also utterly bizarre. What we're 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.240 talking about here is optography. There's a name for this 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.200 scientific practice. What we're gonna do is we're gonna give 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:22.680 you kind of a precursor to optography, and then discuss 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.960 the experiments surrounding it, and then how that led to 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:32.000 a lot of confusion of forensic science for a long time. Alright, 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:35.159 So in order to to understand how this false notion 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.279 could have gained any traction, we have to first look 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.719 at the scientific advancements that preceded it and made it 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.679 seem possible even to serious researchers at the at the time. 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.680 As as we'll get into. Uh, but as always, you know, 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:50.800 a little bit of knowledge is always a dangerous thing. 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:56.679 So in eighteen thirty seven, French artist and physicist Louis 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:01.600 Daguerre invented the Dagara type. This is the first commercially 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:06.880 successful photographic process, and it used an iodine synthitized silverized 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.960 plate and mercury vapor to capture the image, and it 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.120 produced very detailed images. And while it took minutes of 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:18.120 exposure time, this was still swifter than previous photographic methods. Uh, 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:22.080 they couldn't be replicated. Um, and each Daguara type image 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.080 was a mirror image, but still it had just an 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.120 incredible cultural impact at the time, right, Yeah, I mean 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.160 we're still close enough I think in the like relative 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.560 scheme of history that some of us have seen Decara 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:37.480 types before. I have this book that's utterly macabre and 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:41.160 somewhat related to this, that's just Daguero types of dead 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.599 bodies from the nineteenth century because that was a thing 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.520 where people would photograph the dead before they were buried. 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:51.240 And uh, it's fascinating and there's like a cultural history within. 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.200 It's not just me being a weird secko looking at corpses. 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.760 But the Daguera types have a specific texture to them 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:01.719 that I don't think you see photographs today. Yeah, And 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:03.800 it's it's also just it's hard for us to put 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.840 ourselves and given just how how how photographs fill our 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.440 world and how a custom we are to the technology. 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:13.440 It's it's hard for us to imagine what it was 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:18.280 like to suddenly have this technology more readily available. Um. 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:20.280 But but when you looked at some of the commentary 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.000 from the time, you can really begin to to to 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:27.520 to zero in on it. Um. For instance, Oliver Wendell 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.839 Holmes called the aa Gara type quote the mirror with 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:34.400 a memory, which which I think is rather fitting. And 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.960 Edgar Allan Poe uh wrote about the invention in eighteen 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:42.080 forty and I want to read uh some quotes from 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:44.000 him because I think he's he summed up. They're just 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.719 the wonder and awe of this invention rather nicely. And 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:50.159 it's Halloween. So what Poe has to say, if we 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.080 examine a work of ordinary art by means of a 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.120 powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear. 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:01.760 But the closest scrutiny of the photogenetic rawling discloses only 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:06.160 a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.440 with the thing represented. The variations of shade, the gradiations 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.720 of both linear and aerial perspective are those of truth 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.640 itself and the supremeness of its perfection, the results of 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:22.000 the invention cannot even remotely be seen. But all experience 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:25.560 in matters of philosophical discovery teaches us that in such 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.880 a discovery, it is the unforeseen upon which we must 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:33.080 calculate most largely. It is a theorem almost demonstrated that 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:36.600 the consequences of any new scientific invention will at the 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.520 present day exceed by very much the wildest expectations of 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.800 the most imaginative. So I hear that Poe quote, and 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.520 it sounds to me like the advent of photography was 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:51.360 really changing how people thought about the world, right, Because 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.240 up until then, let's be honest, like our awareness of 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:58.680 the world is essentially from the self, because we're looking 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.560 out from ourselves to the world. Right. But with this photograph, 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.280 you can start perceiving the world through the eyes of 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:11.720 the other. Yeah, And that sounds uncanny, like a complete change, 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:13.760 And thought, Yeah, you don't have to depend on the 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.120 fallibility of memory, you don't have to depend on on 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:21.640 an artistic representation that is created by somebody. It's virtually 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.560 instant compared to two artistic techniques and uh, and has 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.800 just incredible detail. So it makes sense that people would 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:32.360 be just applying photography to everything, and and you know, 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:35.080 to your point about taking pictures of the dead to 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.439 commemorate them. Uh, it reminds me. For instance, you remember 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.680 when everybody was getting these um these picture frames that 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:45.120 would throw up multiple digital images. Yes, I got one 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:47.800 for my grandmother a couple of years ago. Yeah, because 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.040 all of our photos were digital and she didn't have 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:53.240 a computer, So we got her one of those. And 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:55.160 then my sister brother and I we just all like 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:57.679 uploaded like a hundred photos into the thing and sent 0:08:57.760 --> 0:08:59.520 it to her for Christmas. Yeah. I mean they still 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:01.760 have them, I obviously, but I feel like for a 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.559 while there everybody had them. It was it was the thing. 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.120 And even at the time, I remember thinking, this is 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.559 this is gonna be a detail in a historic reenactment 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:12.599 in the future. This is gonna this is a technology 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.000 that is going to quickly fade because it's a bit weird. 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.760 It's just not working in the way that a digital 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.719 image and a more traditional digital medium works, or as 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:25.000 a or or the way the physical uh photograph works 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:27.520 in a frame. Right, Yeah, yeah, it is. It is 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:29.079 a strange thing. I think you're right, that's going to 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:31.800 be one of those things that like period pieces fifty 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:34.800 years from now, well they'll they'll throw those weird digital 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:38.240 frames in. All right, So you had the degerotype. It 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:41.960 was new, technology was game changing, it was exciting and 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:45.560 uh and you had a lot of people already appropriating 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.400 all of this excitement to the pseudo to pseudoscientific and 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:51.920 mystical purposes. And we're not gonna get into all those 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:56.720 purposes today. But obviously this was the era of spirit photography. Um, 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:00.360 you know, images of ectoplasm and ghosts and fair area's. 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:04.040 Uh So, anything we're talking about today that gets a 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.000 little uh mystical in nature is really nothing compared to 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:10.840 some of the other uses that were out there. Right, 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:14.920 But this led to how we study the eyeball right, 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:19.320 because there was this cultural idea that the function of 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:22.600 a camera was the same as the biological function of 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.360 an eye, whether that being a human being or a 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.160 rabbit or a rat. That's right. And you know, at 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:30.440 the same time, we were also making huge strides and 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:35.120 studying the eye itself. Uh. In in eighteen fifty we 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.960 saw the invention and and some argue this was just 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:44.840 an independent reinvention of the ophthalmaloscope by German physiologist and 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:50.640 physicist Herman von Helmholtz and the engage revolutionized ophthalmology and 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.560 that it allowed the doctors to see inside the fundness 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:55.920 of the eye. Okay, so this is like the thing 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.480 when I go to the optometrist every year and they 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:00.760 look at my eye with what feels to me like 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:03.760 it's like a microscope or something. But it's obviously a 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.200 lot more complicated than what Helmholtz was working with. So 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:12.520 you take these two technological advancements and in retrospect, it 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.000 seems inevitable that we would get to this realm of 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:17.800 optimology because we're learning more about the eye. We have 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:21.360 this fabulous news technology, and time and time again, we 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.000 can't help but think about the human experience in the 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.760 human body in terms of the technology we use. When 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:30.280 we've talked about memory on the show, we often talk 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.640 about how we we fall into this trap of thinking 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:36.440 about the eyes as video cameras and memory as like 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:41.240 the tape database, and when it's really nothing like that, 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:45.760 you know, aside from the most simplistic uses of that metaphor. Yeah, 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.280 it's actually interesting when you look at that period of 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:53.680 time during the Industrial Revolution, after this invention, right, there 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:57.760 is a lot of focus in sort of fantastic fiction 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:00.520 on the ideas of being able to do the things 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:03.680 that you do in industry better with the biology of 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:07.760 the human body, whether that's like moving faster or being stronger, 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.000 or having better eyesight, like all of those things, like 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:15.480 how can it uh increase the production? Right? And then 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.679 you start seeing investigations like this in science where it's like, oh, well, 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.120 maybe if we peek inside of here, we'll we'll get 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:24.959 some idea how to make it so everybody's got superhuman vision. 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.760 And yet it's still so hard to shake mystical interpretations 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:33.360 of vision. Uh. For instance, just consider that the long 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.360 outdated emission theory of vision. This is the idea that 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:39.679 you see with I beams, the idea that there's some 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.440 sort of force that comes out of my eye and 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.400 touches something that, you know, the the thing I'm trying 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:50.000 to see, and relates the information back to my eyes somehow. Uh. 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:53.599 This has long been abandoned, but according to the to 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.240 an American Psychologist article published in two thousand two, as 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.600 many as fifty percent of adults still bought the emission 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.720 theory rather than the correct intromission theory. Really. Yeah, I've 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.680 never even heard the emission theory outside of like comic books. 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.440 Well in the comic books is a great example because 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.280 it comes down to local Cyclops. The x Cyclops is 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:17.240 who I immediately think of. It gets into this idea 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.960 that without like really thinking about it and room and 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.559 even in many cases I think, just reminding yourself, oh yeah, 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:25.120 light is entering my eyes and that's how I see. 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.480 You end up thinking about reality and thinking about sight 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:33.920 in terms of Cyclops's laser vision. Right, something's coming out 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.600 blasting things. If someone staring at you, they're like peering 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.080 into you with some sort of a force. Yeah, yeah, 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.319 this is interesting. It says more I think about our 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:48.200 uncomfortableity with looking at a living being's eyes than it 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:51.439 does about what we think about how we see things, 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:53.480 you know what I mean. Alright, So, so far we 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.880 have the inherent mystical nature of sight or the experience 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.520 of sight. We have these new technological advancements up. Plus 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.439 you can throw in a little bit of experiential support 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:05.960 as well. If you stare at something for a long 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:10.000 time and then you gaze at a blank wall, what happens? Yeah, 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:12.840 you can still see an impression of that image. And 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.400 you may experience this too with computer screens and whatnot 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:16.840 as well. And to the point of what we're going 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.720 to discuss with optography, that effect is heightened if you 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.600 go from being in a dark place to a bright 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.240 place or vice versa. Yeah. And in eighteen fifty four, 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:33.640 English scientist Reverend William Scoresby UH connected this experiment where 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:35.320 you would stare in an object and then look at 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.000 the wall and then time the image to see how 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:41.840 long it lasted. Um. And that there was this uh 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:45.160 that the paper was on pictorial and photochromatic impressions of 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:48.240 the retina and of the human eye. Uh. And there's 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.320 this wonderful quote. This is from an eighteen fifty four 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:56.160 right up in the uh Antheneum. Upon removing the eyes 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.080 from the object, the author explained the early appearance of 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.400 the picture or image which had been thus impressed on 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:06.200 the retina, or as he expressed it, photographed upon the retina. 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.840 So we have the technology observable perks of human side 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.680 backed up in an experiment, and a general human history 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:16.360 of seeing the eyes as windows into the soul, as 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:20.000 well as observeration observational changes in the eyes of say 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:22.080 a fish, because how do you judge the freshness of 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:24.160 a fish? You look to its eyes. Right when they 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:28.600 start changing and getting cloudy, you know they've been dead longer. Right, Yeah, Okay, 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.120 so let's take a break, and when we get back, 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:34.760 we're gonna take this step and we're gonna move forward 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:41.880 into the rise of optography. All right, we're back. So 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:48.000 optography seems to have begun in the mid seventeenth century actually, 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:50.880 or at least the rumors of something like it, when 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:55.280 a Jesuit friar called Christopher sheen Or observed a faint 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:57.880 image that was disappearing from the bare retina of a 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.600 dissected frog. So, like you were saying, just before a break, right, 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:02.960 we look at fish's eyes to see if they're starting 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.000 to decompose, essentially, and it seems like he was doing 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:08.000 something similar with a frog. But then he was like, wait, 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.360 I see a picture in this frog's eyes. This means something, 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:16.520 right now, Remember what we were talking about earlier with photography. 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:19.880 Photography wasn't really invented until the eighteen forties. This is 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:23.120 what gave rise though, to the idea that the animal 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:27.040 I worked like a camera. So, uh, Shiner's kind of 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:29.680 hypothesis of that there was an image left over in 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.080 the frog's eye seems to have connected with that become 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.680 somewhat of an urban legend. Then we get in eighteen 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.880 sixty three, there's an English photographer who takes a photograph 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.320 of an ox's eye right after the ox dies, and 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.120 he uses a microscope to search for any evidence of 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:49.640 the images left inside. This ox is retina. The photographer 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.760 claims that he could see the fleeting image of stones 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.480 arranged just like the slaughterhouse road that the ox was 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.320 facing just before it received a blow to the head 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.960 that killed it. Okay, so this helps spur this on 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:06.960 even further. It becomes a little bit more of a 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:09.879 so it's sort of just like a rumor, like, oh, 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.000 did you know, like the last thing you see before 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.159 you die is imprinted on your eyeball. Then it was 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:18.840 really studied for the first time by Franz Christian Bull 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.679 and in eighteen seventies six he discovered that there was 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:25.800 a pigment hiding in the back of the eye that 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.600 could bleach in light and then would recover in the dark, 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:33.640 and he called this visual purple. Now today we call 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.000 it rhodopson. I'll give you a little bit of a 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.439 lesson on rhodopsin, but but he's certainly worth noting in 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.000 all this that that that bull was the real deal. 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:44.359 Like this, This wasn't just a photographer who is making 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:48.159 some judgments based on the photographs that he take. In 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:50.240 this is a guy who who studied and made some 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:54.399 real achievements. Absolutely, so we now know today that rhodopson 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:59.000 is a pigment that contains sensory proteins and that converts 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:04.160 light into an electrical signal. This is a common pigment. 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.080 It's in a lot of organisms, from vertebrates to bacteria. 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.639 In fact, I was seeing all kinds of academic papers yesterday. 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.840 You're doing this research on how there's there's some potential animals, 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.760 like some octopi that may have rhodopsin in their skin 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:21.040 that allows them to quote see through their skin in 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:25.199 some ways. It's common, but it's also required for vision 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.840 in dim light, and it's located in the tightly packed 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:32.359 disks that make up the outer segment of the retina's 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:36.280 photo receptive rod cells. Basically, the way it works is 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:40.000 it sends an electrical signal along the optic nerve to 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:44.080 the visual cortex in the brain. The eye sensitivity is 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:47.760 dependent on how much rhodopsin is present, and part of 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:51.800 the visual process involves it being destroyed in this bleaching 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.960 process that I mentioned when it's exposed to light. Now 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.800 here's a weird thing. Mutations in the rhodopsin gene can 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:02.280 actually lead to night blindness. So this is where the 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:06.120 eye fails to adapt to darkness. So radoption is really 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:08.480 important for us being too in D and D terms 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.639 like low light vision right um. And it can be 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:17.920 affected by environmental factors, especially vitamin A deficiency. So if 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:20.560 your vitamin A is low, this can mess with your 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.520 adoption and how well you see at night. Now I 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:28.440 love despite Bowl's scientific pedigree. I love how his experiments 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:32.080 sounds so much like alchemy. I ran across a bit 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:36.400 from his writings as quoted in Optagrams and Criminology, Science 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:40.359 News Reporting and Fanciful Novels by Douglas J. Lanska, and 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.640 here's what both said. I simultaneously decapitated a dozen dark 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:47.439 adapted frogs and kept their heads dark in order to 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:51.960 examine their eyes consecutively at stated intervals. Yeah, man, that 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:56.040 is a common thing with optography, cutting animals heads off 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:58.800 and just keeping them around in the dark. Get ready 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:00.960 for it, because everybody does this, and they even do 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:02.840 it to a couple of people. Yeah, and it's the same, 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:05.520 it's it's it's lines up so well with accounts you 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:09.800 read about how to make a homunculous right exactly. So. Actually, 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.920 before bowl there's this report that in eighteen sixty eight, 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:18.400 a doctor in the German town of Vosquez presented pictures 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:22.479 that he made of the images from to murder victims eyes, 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:28.320 and a medical expert named August Gabriel Maxim Vernois was 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:32.119 asked to examine this concept and tested empirically. So he's 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.160 basically the outsider scientist comes to this town, he takes 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:38.840 a look. Was he do experiments on sixteen dogs and cats, 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.280 presumably cutting up their eyeballs in their heads. He finds 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.439 no pictures. He finds that this isn't true. This but 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:47.639 something's wrong here, right, Yeah. I think one of the 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:51.960 interesting things though, particularly about bowls experiments um, is that 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.879 that he was excited by the chemical process that seemed 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.240 to be taking place there because it was it was 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.679 rather like the silver nitrate in photograph plates. It was 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:02.520 like this chemical process that was a part of this 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:07.600 exciting technology. So again we can't help but see the 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:12.560 comparisons between the technology and the human experience. Yeah, and 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:14.560 I think that's the difference here, right, is that bull 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:19.360 was actually like working with the chemistry and biology, whereas 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.960 like whatever went on in this town of Vosquez, like 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.280 it was really just somebody taking pictures of murder victims 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:29.199 eyes and thinking they saw something there. Right, But this 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:32.879 all changes and in Germany. Germany seems to be the 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:34.719 center point for a lot of this. I wonder if 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:37.879 there's something specific to German culture that revolves around the 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:40.720 idea of being able to see an image on a 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.119 dead person's eyeball. Oh, I don't know, I mean to 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:44.640 I mean to a certain extent. I think just sort 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:48.520 of necromatic ideas about communicating with the dead or or 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:52.360 perhaps universal. Now on the chemistry side, though, of course, 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:55.120 you can look to the the huge achievements in chemistry 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:58.920 that were made in Germany, you know, around this time 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:02.360 and into the they Well, German listeners, if you've got 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:04.280 some insights into this, we'd love to hear from you. 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:09.359 But here comes Wilhelm Friederic Kuhn now Kun, was a 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:13.560 professor of physiology at the University of Heidelberg and he 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:17.920 studied rhodopson. He devised a process to fix the chemical 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:21.119 in the eyeball and then develop an image from it. 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:25.720 And these experiments grew out of his accidental observation of 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:29.159 the shape of a gas flame from his laboratory on 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:34.200 the retina of a frog. So Kun performs this famous experiment. 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:35.600 This is the one. Like any time you look at 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.920 optography articles or anything, this always comes up. This is 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:43.080 the most famous experiment. He takes an albino rabbit in 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:46.840 seven and he fastens this rabbit's head so that it's 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:51.160 forced to look at a barred window. Then he covers 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:53.240 its head for several minutes I think with like a 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:57.000 bag or something, uh, and this lets the rhodopson accumulate 0:22:57.000 --> 0:23:01.359 in the rabbit's eyeballs. Then takes the bag or whatever 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:04.679 off of the rabbit's head, lets the eyeball be exposed 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:07.720 to light for three minutes, and then decapitates the rabbit. 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:12.639 He removes the rabbit's eyeball, cuts the eyeball open, and 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:17.000 takes the retina and lays it in a solution of alum. 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:21.880 Then he would bathe the eyeball afterward in sulfuric acid 0:23:22.000 --> 0:23:26.080 and this would cement these images. The next day, the 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:28.879 image would then become printed and it would show a 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:32.440 clear pattern of this window that the rabbit was looking 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:36.560 at with its bars right before it died. So Kun 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:41.280