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Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, everybody,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Land, and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back today to discuss a little

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Speaker 1: bit more in the history of photography, the invention of

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Speaker 1: the first identifiable photographs. Now we've already done sort of

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Speaker 1: a couple of episodes on this subject. We just had

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Speaker 1: a whole episode about the camera obscura, the the idea

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Speaker 1: that a closed, darkened chamber with a pinhole aperture will

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Speaker 1: project images from the outside world on a on a

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Speaker 1: darkened wall, upside down and inverted, and how this has

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Speaker 1: been used in say, the history of art, and how

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Speaker 1: it was discovered. But then in the last episode we

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Speaker 1: started talking about the precursors to modern photography. So we

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Speaker 1: talked about Johann Heinrich Schultz and silver nitrate, his discovery

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Speaker 1: about how silver nitrate darkens when exposed to light. We

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Speaker 1: talked about Tom Wedgewood, the dream Boy, and Humphrey Davy

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Speaker 1: and their experiments with what came to be called photograms

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Speaker 1: or shadow grams, also based on silver nitrate. And we

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Speaker 1: talked about Joseph Nissafgnieps and heliography, which involved like put

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Speaker 1: putting like bitumen on a on a plate and then

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Speaker 1: exposing it to light and then washing off the parts

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Speaker 1: that hadn't hardened. And so I guess we should remember

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Speaker 1: where this technology was where it was left after Tom

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Speaker 1: Wedgwood and Humphrey Davy's shadow grams. We we had figured

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Speaker 1: out that you can cote, say a piece of leather

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Speaker 1: or piece of glass or something any kind of surface

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Speaker 1: with silver nitrate based solution and fix images or silhouettes

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Speaker 1: onto the surface with light. But the problem was they

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Speaker 1: couldn't figure out how to fix this image so that

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Speaker 1: it was durable when exposed to more light. They needed

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Speaker 1: a way of preventing additional exposure to light from corrupting

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Speaker 1: the original image. So I'm really enjoying this exploration into photography, uh,

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Speaker 1: in part because it's just so much more to it

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Speaker 1: than I initially realized. It's huge. Yeah, and I felt

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Speaker 1: like I had like a pretty good grasp of the

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Speaker 1: history of photography and the invention of photography. Um, but

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Speaker 1: when you when you start digging into it and uh

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Speaker 1: and really stopping to consider this this weird almost alchemical

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Speaker 1: process of early photography. Um, you know, it's so easy

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Speaker 1: to take take it for granted nowadays, with our our

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Speaker 1: instant digital imagery, that is just h and it's just

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Speaker 1: like magic, and we don't think about it. We've become

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Speaker 1: immune to the magic. We've we've become immune to it.

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Speaker 1: And I think it's really helpful to to take it

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Speaker 1: apart and look back at how we made these advancements. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and of course, remember you make that comparison to alchemy.

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Speaker 1: But Isaac Newton almost explicitly made that comparison. And remember

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Speaker 1: he talked about that it was a part of nature,

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Speaker 1: that that nature loves transmutation, you know, this terminology transmutation,

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Speaker 1: like the transmutation of lead into gold, which of course

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Speaker 1: the alchemists wanted to do but I couldn't find a

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Speaker 1: way to do and ultimately was a fool's errand because

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Speaker 1: they didn't understand things about nuclear chemistry, and you know

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Speaker 1: why that couldn't happen. But even though he's wrong in

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Speaker 1: his kind of alchemy based leaning is Isaac Newton does

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Speaker 1: make this comparison in the realm of light. He says

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Speaker 1: that light may well want to be transmuted into bodies

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Speaker 1: by nature might want to be transmuted into material changes

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Speaker 1: in substances you can hold in your hand. And of

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Speaker 1: course this is exactly the chemistry behind what would become photography,

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Speaker 1: light causing changes in substance. Yeah, and you know, one

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Speaker 1: of the things about the invention of photography too, I

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Speaker 1: think it's a great it's a great model for invention

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Speaker 1: to consider past inventions we've discussed and future inventions, um,

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Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to certain questions, and one of

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Speaker 1: the big questions that we've we've loved to ask in

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Speaker 1: regards to invention is why now, why not earlier? Why

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Speaker 1: was any given invention? Why did it come to fruition

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Speaker 1: at this particular time time and not an earlier time?

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Speaker 1: And indeed, there have been there's been some consideration on

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Speaker 1: this regarding Schultz's silver nitrate discoveries and why photography didn't

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Speaker 1: take off in the early seventeen hundreds. And granted we're

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Speaker 1: not talking about a huge lapse here. This is one

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Speaker 1: of those situations where a technology comes around, it's forgotten

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Speaker 1: for centuries or millennia. But but but it has led

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Speaker 1: many people to wonder, like, you know, why is there

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Speaker 1: this gap? Um? And uh, I when I was looking

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Speaker 1: into this I found a wonderful arts in society. That's

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Speaker 1: the website um story titled why wasn't Photography invented Earlier?

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Speaker 1: By Philip mccott. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's

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Speaker 1: a h MC C O U A T. If you

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Speaker 1: want to look look up this paper. But the author

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Speaker 1: points out that this question was pondered in the highly

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Speaker 1: influential History of Photography by the Gersheims uh quote. The

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Speaker 1: circumstance that photography was not invented earlier remains the greatest

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Speaker 1: mystery in its history. I don't I mean, that's always

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Speaker 1: a fun question to ask, but I don't know if

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Speaker 1: it's always as piercing a question as the people asking

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Speaker 1: it think it is, because technology always seems obvious looking back.

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Speaker 1: But I don't know. I mean, why wasn't the wheel

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Speaker 1: invented earlier? We talked about this in the Wheel episode.

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Speaker 1: We we don't know the answer. Maybe one answer as given.

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Speaker 1: I think it was the hypothesis of Richard Bullet in

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Speaker 1: that book we talked about was that the wheel just

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Speaker 1: wasn't really necessary until you had certain very specific types

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Speaker 1: of transportation scenarios. His his hypothesis is that that would

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Speaker 1: be copper mining. This is you know, the wheel showed

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Speaker 1: up there, because it's a scenario where a wheel makes

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Speaker 1: a huge difference compared to say a normal pack animal

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Speaker 1: that would have been used for thousands of years before that.

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Speaker 1: But on like stuff to blow your mind. We've also

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Speaker 1: asked questions about basic electrical technologies. Why didn't the ancient

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Speaker 1: Romans have friction generators or capacitors. They could have had those.

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Speaker 1: There's nothing stopping them from having these objects. They just

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Speaker 1: never really did it or not that we know of

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Speaker 1: for sure. And so a lot of times it's just

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Speaker 1: hard to come up with a satisfactory explanation. But I

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Speaker 1: think we should we should also question ourselves here and

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Speaker 1: question the assumptions we're making when we ask that question

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Speaker 1: with with with like an accusatory tone. Yeah. And and

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Speaker 1: mccatt does a great job of sort of tackling this

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Speaker 1: on two fronts. So, so first of all, he sort

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Speaker 1: of he he looks at some of the the counter

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Speaker 1: evidence to this whole mystery, right, and he points out

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Speaker 1: that Schultz's discoveries were probably not as widespread as some

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Speaker 1: historians may have interpreted, uh, and that the man's presentation

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Speaker 1: to the Imperial Academy in Nuremberg went quote largely unnoticed,

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Speaker 1: and it is work wouldn't see actual publication go after

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Speaker 1: his death, and his work was very likely difficult to

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Speaker 1: access and not considered of much value at the time. Quote. Furthermore,

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Speaker 1: those who actually were familiar with it were more likely

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Speaker 1: to have come across it in popular books on amusing

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Speaker 1: parlor tricks rather than in scientific journals. Yeah, like, try

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Speaker 1: to forget photography exists and pretend you just don't know

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Speaker 1: that this is even possible. Somebody demonstrates to you that

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Speaker 1: a bottle holding a slurry of silver nitrate, you can

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Speaker 1: make letters in the side of the bottle with a

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Speaker 1: stencil by exposing those areas to light, and then you

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Speaker 1: shake the bottle and they go away. Do you immediately conclude, Ah,

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Speaker 1: I can fix images of the natural world. I'm not

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Speaker 1: so sure that's obvious to people who do not have

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Speaker 1: our photography adult brains. But to be clear, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about a hundred years or so. Still, that's a considerable

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Speaker 1: chunk of time. Right. So Schultze's experiments with silver nitrate

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Speaker 1: darkening and a bottle that was in the seventeen teens,

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Speaker 1: like seventeen seventeen, and then we had Tom Wedgewood and

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Speaker 1: Humphrey Davy around the turn of the eighteen hundreds. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and we're gonna get to today Henry Fox Talbot and

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Speaker 1: Louis de Gare, who come up with what's really definitely

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Speaker 1: something that counts as photography around the eighteen thirties, towards

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Speaker 1: the end of the eighteen thirty. Now, another important to

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Speaker 1: effect that mccau points out here is that, of course

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Speaker 1: you have to have uh, some other key and advancements

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Speaker 1: come along in chemistry to make photography, the further evolution

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Speaker 1: of of photography really possible exactly. I mean, because as

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Speaker 1: we're going to see, like Dagarin Talbot's processes are more

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Speaker 1: chemically complicated than what these earlier people were trying to do. Right,

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Speaker 1: So specifically you need the isolation and production of both

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Speaker 1: iodine and bromine. But in addition to all of this, uh.

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Speaker 1: Mccau does a good job too of ruminating on the

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Speaker 1: role of hindsight in all of these matters. It's easy

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Speaker 1: for us to say, why didn't someone think of that earlier?

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Speaker 1: Like here are the pieces uh, And he points to

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Speaker 1: a particular study on hindsight bias. Um. This one was

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Speaker 1: a one by a Mandel patently non obvious empirical demonstration

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Speaker 1: that the hindsight bias renders patent decisions irrational from Ohio

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Speaker 1: State Law Journal in two in twenty in two thousand six. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so what Mandel find here? Well, so the key takeaways

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Speaker 1: from this are seventy of people who have been told

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Speaker 1: that a solution had actually been found considered that this

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Speaker 1: solution would have been obvious. Twenty percent of people who

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Speaker 1: had not been told that a solution had been found

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Speaker 1: felt that the solution would be obvious, and this held

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Speaker 1: true even when subjects were warned against the dangers of

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Speaker 1: hindsight bias. Okay, so just telling somebody people have already

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Speaker 1: figured out X, even if maybe it's something they didn't

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Speaker 1: already know about, makes it seem obvious to them exactly

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Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, I think this this, Uh, this falls

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Speaker 1: in a little bit with the potential dangers of narrative thinking,

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Speaker 1: which we recently discussed on our other podcast, Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. Um. It seems that when we learn

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Speaker 1: of an outcome, such as something from the history of invention,

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Speaker 1: we incorporate that ending into the story of the events,

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Speaker 1: and therefore the end becomes seemingly inevitable. Oh, this is

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Speaker 1: always a part of narrative. Like when you're in the

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Speaker 1: middle of a movie, you're thinking, how's it going to end?

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Speaker 1: But then when you get to the end, you're like,

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Speaker 1: that was obvious. Of course it had to end that way.

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Speaker 1: Of course they were going to invent photography, right. But

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Speaker 1: his Macca points out, you know, some people have have

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Speaker 1: certainly disagreed on the inevitable nature of photography. Author Cee Clark,

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Speaker 1: for instance, who in addition to writing science fiction, wrote

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Speaker 1: a lot about science and the history of science, and

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Speaker 1: he considered photography to be one of the sixteen most

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Speaker 1: une unexpected inventions. Oh no, I'm this has got me thinking,

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Speaker 1: what are the most unexpected inventions we've covered on the

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Speaker 1: show so far? X rays have got to be one

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Speaker 1: of them, right, that's just out of the blue, no idea.

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Speaker 1: X rays is definitely on that list, along with nuclear energy,

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Speaker 1: radio lasers, and carbon dating, uh, and of course some others.

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Speaker 1: Those are the ones that he highlights in covering Clark's work.

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Speaker 1: But uh. He says that one of the key things

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Speaker 1: is that a lot of the the entries on Clark's

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Speaker 1: list are our inventions that span different disciplines. And again,

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Speaker 1: I think to all the things coming together in photography.

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Speaker 1: You have the arts with painting, and you have optics,

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Speaker 1: and then you have this, uh, this chemical aspect of

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Speaker 1: the whole scenario as well. Oh yeah, I mean, much

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Speaker 1: like carbon dating that covers so many different disciplines. I mean,

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Speaker 1: so that's going to be like physics and nuclear chemistry

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Speaker 1: and geology and atmospheric science and archaeology. I think those

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Speaker 1: really are also the most exciting kinds of inventions, the

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Speaker 1: ones that are not just a an advance in a

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Speaker 1: clearly defined discipline, but something that yeah, draws from many

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Speaker 1: different sources. Absolutely. All right, on that note, we're going

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Speaker 1: to take our first break. But when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we are going to get into the next step in

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Speaker 1: the evolution of photography. We're gonna be talking about the

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Speaker 1: de Guero type. Alright, we're back, So it is time

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Speaker 1: to meet one of the major characters in the history

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Speaker 1: of photography, maybe the most important character, Louis gere So.

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Speaker 1: The last episode we did ended with a discussion of

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Speaker 1: Joseph Nissa Fourgnieps and his heliography method which involved using

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Speaker 1: various kinds of resin, like originally bitumen and lavender oil

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Speaker 1: that would harden when exposed to light, and then the

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Speaker 1: unhardened resin could be washed away and this would allow

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Speaker 1: hardened patterns of resin to form the basis of a

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Speaker 1: heliograph inside a camera box. And you could probably argue

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Speaker 1: that this did in some sense constitute photography as we

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Speaker 1: understand it. But the exposures took a really long time.

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Speaker 1: You might have to expose them for hours or even days,

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Speaker 1: and the resin was just not the best medium for

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Speaker 1: recording images. But this process becomes important mainly because of

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Speaker 1: the way that Nieps ended up partnering with this guy

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Speaker 1: named Louis de Gere, and they worked together for several years,

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Speaker 1: I think, beginning in eighteen twenty nine, right, and then

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Speaker 1: Nips died in eighteen thirty three at the age of

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Speaker 1: sixty eight. Uh So, really a lot of what we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today is like where did you go from there?

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Speaker 1: Like Nips passes his discoveries off to the gear and

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Speaker 1: then and then what comes of that? Is it callous

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Speaker 1: of me that I'm just imagining? When when Yepps died,

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Speaker 1: he made a sound and that sound was nieps. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, maybe that's not even funny. I don't know

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Speaker 1: why my brain goes to there um, but but it's

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Speaker 1: still It is important to note that they did work

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Speaker 1: together for for several years there, so it wasn't just like,

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Speaker 1: you know, he met and met this guy and then

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Speaker 1: he died and then the new guy took off with

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Speaker 1: it like they they were working together on this, but

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Speaker 1: they they didn't find a solution during NIPS life. Right,

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Speaker 1: So let's let's discuss the gere a little bit. So

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Speaker 1: his his name was Louise Jacques Monde de Gear and

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Speaker 1: he was born in sevent seven, and he was he

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Speaker 1: was primarily you could say, an artist of various kinds.

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Speaker 1: He was sort of an artist entrepreneur. He was a painter.

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Speaker 1: What else did he do? Oh, he was a printmaker

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Speaker 1: and prior to the all this photography jazz, his biggest

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Speaker 1: success came through the medium of diorama. Now, this is

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Speaker 1: an interesting thing. This is gonna be a little bit

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Speaker 1: different than what you probably think of when you think diorama,

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Speaker 1: because what I think of is I think of going

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Speaker 1: to a museum and seeing a lot of cool dioramas

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Speaker 1: or increasingly working on elementary school dioramas with my son.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's gluesome dinosaurs in there. Let's let's get

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Speaker 1: some some cardboard plants in the back of that shoebox.

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Speaker 1: And uh, let's let's get an a on this puppy.

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Speaker 1: It's always a shoebox. You cut one wall out or

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Speaker 1: you just turn it on its side, I guess, and

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Speaker 1: remove the lid. I was doing it all wrong anyway. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, you put some action figures in there, you

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Speaker 1: do some coloring, but no, this is a little bit different,

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Speaker 1: though it's a similar kind of concept. It is creating

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Speaker 1: a static image or scene that is a spectacle that

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Speaker 1: simulates realism and draws attention. So the diorama, which will

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Speaker 1: explain in a minute, began around eighteen twenty one, but

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Speaker 1: before this to gear training as an artist and a painter,

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Speaker 1: and one of the things that Degare worked on was

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Speaker 1: the panorama, which was a type of public spectacle in

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Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, I think, going back to good

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Speaker 1: Bit before then, involving three hundred and sixty degree paintings

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Speaker 1: inside an enclosed space, so there'd be like a cylinder

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Speaker 1: shaped room you go and sit inside, and then you

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Speaker 1: could simulate a whole environment by viewing this three hundred

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Speaker 1: and sixty degree painting from the inside with attempts to

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Speaker 1: capture as much realism as possible, like they would even

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Speaker 1: they had all these methods for recreating perspective accurately, And

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Speaker 1: so you could be in Paris maybe, but go inside

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Speaker 1: a room that looked like the city of Edinburgh and

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Speaker 1: and you know, look around and it would be like

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Speaker 1: being there. For any of our Atlanta based listeners, it's

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Speaker 1: been to Atlanta. I know where you're going with this.

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Speaker 1: You're probably thinking of Cyclorama, which is not about motorcycles.

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Speaker 1: It sounds potentially sounds more exciting than it is was uh,

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Speaker 1: And I say that because I'm not really sure about

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Speaker 1: its current status. It was located in its own building

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Speaker 1: next to Zoo Atlanta, and it is either in the

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Speaker 1: process of being moved or has moved to a new location. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So whenever you listen to this episode, look it up

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Speaker 1: and uh and see if you can find out where

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Speaker 1: it is. But the the idea of Cyclorama was that

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Speaker 1: it was uh if you visited it, you know, on

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Speaker 1: a school trip or what have you. It was this

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Speaker 1: Civil war painting that was uh, that was you that

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Speaker 1: went all the way around the walls of this circular room.

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Speaker 1: And they also had some like three D elements coming

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Speaker 1: out in front of it to sort of give it

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Speaker 1: this sense of depth. And then you would also be

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Speaker 1: seated in this uh, this kind of stadium seating that

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Speaker 1: would uh, that would revolve so that you could see

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Speaker 1: all of the painting while music played and so forth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so try to simulate being in a place, right it

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Speaker 1: was it was going for realism and way and this

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Speaker 1: is pretty much the same principle as the kind of

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Speaker 1: panoramas that the Gear worked on as a painter. But

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Speaker 1: in the early eighteen twenties, Digere went into this new

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Speaker 1: type of project as a as an artist and a

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Speaker 1: proprietor um that was known as the diorama. And the

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Speaker 1: diorama was not exactly like the panorama. It wasn't a

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Speaker 1: you know, circular thing that that went all around you,

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Speaker 1: but it was a painted image spectacle that people looked at.

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Speaker 1: And what they were really trying to do was to

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Speaker 1: create a startling level of realism in large scale painting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like what in a way he was really trying to

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Speaker 1: push beyond the medium to say like, okay, what could

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Speaker 1: I do beyond just presenting a painting of, say a landscape,

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Speaker 1: what could we do to say, simulate weather? Could we

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Speaker 1: change the lighting on it? Um? And then ultimately you know,

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Speaker 1: this involved the presentation of two sided works of art

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Speaker 1: with dramatic lighting to change you know, what you were seeing. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know it's it's it's difficult even looking at images

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Speaker 1: and even videos of this. It's it's often uh problematic

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Speaker 1: to try and imagine exactly what it what it consisted of.

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Speaker 1: But um, I imagine is having similarities to the older

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Speaker 1: traditions of shadow puppetry, which of course depended on on

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Speaker 1: performing something with a screen uh, and also certain dramatic

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Speaker 1: scroll presentation performance art form. So you find in various

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Speaker 1: cultures where you are you are taking a two D

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Speaker 1: image and you are displaying it dramatically. But the key

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Speaker 1: here in the diorama was the change changing the lighting

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Speaker 1: to bring to life one of the two versions of

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Speaker 1: the art, such as say a dormant volcano on one

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Speaker 1: side of the image and an interrupting one on the other,

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Speaker 1: or some or simply casting painted storm clouds with lightning

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Speaker 1: to give them the sense of give the to give

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Speaker 1: the sense that it's alive with actual storm activity. Exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's that kind of thing. And so uh. In the

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Speaker 1: last episode I mentioned this book I've been reading called

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Speaker 1: Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport, about

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Speaker 1: the invention of photography, and it quotes some contemporaneous sources

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Speaker 1: describing the diorama that I that I thought were kind

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Speaker 1: of helpful in establishing how powerful this medium was to people.

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Speaker 1: So there was a critic of the Paris Monthly Review

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Speaker 1: who was writing about one of Daguerre's early dioramas, which

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Speaker 1: was a painting that was supposed to represent the inside

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Speaker 1: of Canterbury Cathedral. Okay, so the critic writes this, anyone

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Speaker 1: who views the interior of Canterbury Cathedral from the gallery

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Speaker 1: of the diorama can with difficulty persuade himself that he

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Speaker 1: is not looking up it's almost interminable aisle from the

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Speaker 1: actual organ loft. And again, when the scene has changed

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Speaker 1: and we gaze upon the valley of Sarnan, we are

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Speaker 1: electrified by our representation, so miraculous in execution, we mark

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Speaker 1: so plainly before us the mountains, lake and buildings which

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Speaker 1: some of us have seen before while leaning from our

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Speaker 1: rustic balconies, that the mind loses itself in a vision

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Speaker 1: of wonder and delight. Uh. And then also they write

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Speaker 1: in their book that the Dean of Canterbury, So who

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Speaker 1: you know, from the actual cathedral came uh they say,

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Speaker 1: quote came specifically to view the diorama of his cathedral,

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Speaker 1: and quote could scarcely believe at the sight of the

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Speaker 1: cathedral that he was not in his own chapel. There

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Speaker 1: are reports of people so convinced by the realism of

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Speaker 1: these scenes depicted in the dioramas, like the cathedral, that

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Speaker 1: they would approach the proscenium inside the theater and try

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Speaker 1: to walk into the scenes like thinking they were real,

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Speaker 1: which reminds me of those stories of people getting freaked

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Speaker 1: out in in early movies when somebody would say point

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Speaker 1: a gun at the camera. There would be a train

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Speaker 1: rushing toward the camera. But yeah, So the fascinated and

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Speaker 1: enthralled reactions to the dioramas seemed to say something interesting

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Speaker 1: about the demand for visual all media and realism in

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Speaker 1: visual media, Like I'm trying to imagine how people coming

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Speaker 1: in off the streets to pay essentially to go to

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Speaker 1: a movie, but not a movie, just one huge painting

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Speaker 1: with dynamic lighting effects to simulate stuff like lightning or

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Speaker 1: sunshine or running water. Would you know, would just be

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Speaker 1: so enraptured by this? I mean, I guess we go

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Speaker 1: into museums to look at art usually you have an

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Speaker 1: idea that this is some kind of edifying experience that

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Speaker 1: you know, you learned something about history, and you're gonna

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Speaker 1: look at a lot of different artworks. I'm very interested

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Speaker 1: in the idea that people would go in to pay

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Speaker 1: to sit in the theater and just like look at

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Speaker 1: one gigantic painting, or I think they might change them

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Speaker 1: out so you might look at two in in one

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Speaker 1: sitting or something, uh, with these lighting effects and and

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Speaker 1: sometimes I think they had sound effects to and you'd

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Speaker 1: be like, this is this is great afternoon? Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I can. On one hand, I think back

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Speaker 1: to visiting the Cyclorama, and the Cyclorama is a lot

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Speaker 1: more interesting than than it may have sounded. You know,

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Speaker 1: this is a cool history to it and all, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know where the painting came from, what kind of

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Speaker 1: you know, the varying conditions it was in over the

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Speaker 1: course of its history. But still it's it's not as

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Speaker 1: exciting as a movie, right. Uh So, on one hand,

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Speaker 1: I want to bring that experience into trying to imagine this.

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Speaker 1: But then also I think to some of the more

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Speaker 1: engaging large works of art that I've appreciated over the years.

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Speaker 1: Uh be it like an Irving Norman, Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: a large scale triptych or another example would be, uh,

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Speaker 1: I forget the the year of its creation, but the

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Speaker 1: huge medicine Buddha that is displayed at the met in

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Speaker 1: New York City. Uh. Like those are both large scale

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Speaker 1: pieces that you can just spend a lot of time

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Speaker 1: looking at, looking at the details, walking around, you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of adjusting the lighting insofar as you can do

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Speaker 1: that by moving your perspective. So with based on those experiences, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can imagine how the dioramic experience could have taken hold,

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Speaker 1: especially in this time before these other visual medium mediums

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Speaker 1: were really available. Yeah. I think that's right. And you

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Speaker 1: mentioned adjusting the lighting just by moving around to look

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Speaker 1: at it from different angles. That One thing that I

414
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Speaker 1: think is very interesting about this is that apparently a

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Speaker 1: skilled to Gear specifically brought to this project was his

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Speaker 1: skill with lighting and I remember this is before electric

417
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Speaker 1: spotlights and stuff, so it's it's written that do Gear

418
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Speaker 1: had to basically use sunlight, like you would have the

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Speaker 1: mechanical operation of windows and shutters and skylights to direct

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Speaker 1: light onto the image in certain ways. And sometimes they

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Speaker 1: did employ sound effects too, so it wasn't just that.

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Speaker 1: But like, it's amazing trying to think what would you

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Speaker 1: do if you were trying to like light a play

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Speaker 1: but you had to use sunlight? Yeah, you know, it

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Speaker 1: also brings it on and just what goes into displaying

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Speaker 1: art in a museum, you know, just all the lighting

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Speaker 1: and a placement, uh, considerations that have to be in

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Speaker 1: effect just to be able to not even think about

429
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,119
Speaker 1: the physical location, to be able to focus on the

430
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:13,879
Speaker 1: art itself. Yeah. So do Garre find success with the diorama?

431
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: This does eventually prove to be a successful money making operation,

432
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:22,120
Speaker 1: and uh, but Gear is not satisfied. He doesn't want

433
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:26,320
Speaker 1: to stop there. He remains interested in this thing of

434
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:30,359
Speaker 1: increasing realism in art, and so you can pretty easily

435
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:33,600
Speaker 1: see how this might set someone on the road toward

436
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:38,240
Speaker 1: developing photography. Yeah, I mean his interest lined up perfectly

437
00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:41,919
Speaker 1: again kind of in hindsight, but he was a painter.

438
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 1: He was a camera obscurity enthusiast, an inventor, and someone

439
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 1: who was eager to experiment with new technologies. Right. He

440
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,199
Speaker 1: was on this hunt for ever increasing realism in art.

441
00:24:52,440 --> 00:24:55,680
Speaker 1: He was sort of obsessed with capturing realism in images,

442
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 1: but he didn't have the tools to get as much

443
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:02,439
Speaker 1: realism as he wanted, and he became interested in discovering

444
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 1: what those tools might be, even though he didn't really

445
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:07,920
Speaker 1: have any scientific training. Like the Gere was not a scientist.

446
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: He was an artist. And this brings another thing to

447
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:12,520
Speaker 1: mine and perhaps you can comment on this from from

448
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:14,399
Speaker 1: the book you were reading, But it also seems that

449
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: the Gear had either personal charisma or just very good

450
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:24,119
Speaker 1: social networking skills because his his biography, you know, you

451
00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:28,159
Speaker 1: can pinpoint all the various important connections he's making, be

452
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:31,920
Speaker 1: it with uh, you know, like a key inventor like

453
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 1: like Nips, or various important and influential members of the

454
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: of the French academies. Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean

455
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: we I don't think we were really going to get

456
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 1: into this in the episode, but like his friendship with

457
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:48,359
Speaker 1: Charles Chevalier ended up proving very important and um, yeah,

458
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 1: he he seemed to make friends well like people liked him.

459
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 1: He was charismatic. He was he was a remarkable person.

460
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: He did not seem to have just a rogues list

461
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 1: of enemies that he made impair, not like Adolph Sachs,

462
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: the inventor of the saxophone, who instantly got into trouble.

463
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 1: But no, yeah, you're exactly right in the point you

464
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:11,199
Speaker 1: make there. Yeah, like de Gare had strengths he was

465
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: bringing to this invention process that we're not necessarily in

466
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: strengths in say empirical research or the sciences. They were

467
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 1: all kinds of other strengths. They were strengths with knowledge

468
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:25,879
Speaker 1: of the arts, with hands on experience and how people

469
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:29,399
Speaker 1: re ate relate to media and imagery and in the

470
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:32,439
Speaker 1: arts and in the dioramas and the panoramas. It was

471
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:35,399
Speaker 1: networking and social skills. He had a lot of this

472
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:37,320
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, I mean, in a way, I'm reminded

473
00:26:37,359 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 1: of Jim Hinson, you know, when you when you look

474
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 1: at the at the skills he brought to the table,

475
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 1: like you know, not only was he it was the artistic,

476
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:48,200
Speaker 1: but he was also who you know, seemed to have

477
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: have you know, a lot of personal charisma, was great

478
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:53,399
Speaker 1: at working with people, had a good business mindset. So

479
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:55,639
Speaker 1: you had all of these skills helping to to to

480
00:26:55,800 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: leverage what they could achieve in life. Yeah, And so Gara,

481
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: of course, was also familiar with optical aids in art,

482
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,000
Speaker 1: like the camera obscure. I think you mentioned that, And

483
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 1: like others before him, he became sort of obsessed with

484
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:13,479
Speaker 1: trying to fix the images they were projected in a

485
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:17,600
Speaker 1: camera obscura by some chemical means. And in their book,

486
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: Watson and Rappaport make an interesting argument. They say the

487
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 1: following quote, had he known more of the complexities of chemistry,

488
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:29,399
Speaker 1: he might have been daunted. Instead, it was precisely his

489
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:33,480
Speaker 1: scientific naivete that allowed him to tackle the challenges that

490
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: lay lay ahead, unaware of the mind field of potential

491
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:41,119
Speaker 1: failure that lay before him. Now. I don't know if

492
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 1: they're right about that, but that's a very interesting read

493
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 1: on the story, that it's essentially the fact that he

494
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: doesn't know what he's doing that that gives him the

495
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: energy to do it. Like no one had probably convinced

496
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: him that this was an astounding task he was that

497
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: he was setting out to conquer. Yeah, like nobody had.

498
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: He was not convinced that he could not do it right. Again.

499
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's right, but it's very interesting.

500
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. Uh and so do Gare

501
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:11,679
Speaker 1: seems to have begun experimenting with with attempts to invent

502
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: photography around eighteen twenty four, so a few years after

503
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: his first success with the diorama and his work. Habits

504
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:23,680
Speaker 1: were reportedly devoted bordering on manic like. His friends said

505
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 1: that he would stay in his laboratory studio for days

506
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 1: at a time, that he would miss meals. Sometimes he'd

507
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: work without sleeping. His wife became very concerned about him.

508
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: There's one story that we only have for many years

509
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:40,040
Speaker 1: after the fact, so it's somewhat questionable whether it's true.

510
00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 1: But this comes from a French chemist named Jean Baptiste

511
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 1: Andre Duma, and Watson and Rappaport relay this story in

512
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 1: their book. They say that one day in eighteen twenty seven,

513
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: Duma reports that after he had been giving a lecture

514
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: at the Sorbonne in Paris, um he was approached by

515
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: a woman and h here's how it goes. Quote a

516
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:03,880
Speaker 1: woman who seemed to be in a very worried state

517
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: of mind. Monsieur Dumas, She said, I have to ask

518
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: you a question of vital importance to myself. I am

519
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: the wife of Dagere, the painter. He has for some

520
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 1: time been possessed by the idea that he can fix

521
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: the images of a camera. He is always at the thought.

522
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: He cannot sleep at night for it. I am afraid

523
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:24,560
Speaker 1: he is out of his mind. Do you, as a

524
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: man of science, think it can be done? Or is

525
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:30,719
Speaker 1: he mad? In the present state of our knowledge, replied

526
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: Duma it cannot be done, but I cannot say it

527
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 1: will always remain impossible, nor set them in down as

528
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 1: mad who seeks to do it, which I'm sure to

529
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 1: her was like the worst possible kind of answer, right,

530
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:46,160
Speaker 1: because it's like, so she couldn't be told like, yes,

531
00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: you need to make him stop, but also couldn't be

532
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 1: told that, yeah, I think he could do that. It's

533
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 1: like it's probably impossible, but he should keep trying. But

534
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 1: it kind of plays into this idea of you know,

535
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 1: the non scientists just plow owing obliviously into the cutting

536
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: edge of chemistry. There's something extremely charming and attractive about that.

537
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: I agree, I mean, especially again with hindsight knowing that

538
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 1: he he eventually succeeds. Yeah, I guess most people who

539
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: tried to do this probably would not succeed. But to Gare,

540
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: I mean, he seemed he was dedicated to his work,

541
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: even if he wasn't scientifically trained. He was clearly very clever.

542
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: You know, he picked up on things. He was good,

543
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 1: you know, working, working, solving problems with his hands. And

544
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: Sodge's efforts failed for years until through a mutual friend,

545
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 1: he came into contact with the man we were talking

546
00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 1: about in the last episode and who we've mentioned several

547
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: times now shows f Nissa Fogniepps, the scientist who had

548
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:47,000
Speaker 1: invented the crude bitumen based method of heliography in the

549
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:50,360
Speaker 1: in the eighteen twenties. And I think here we can

550
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: sort of mark a turning point for Togere. Yeah, I

551
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 1: mean he's he's made a connection with someone with expertise

552
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,640
Speaker 1: in the matter, and he can he can combine that

553
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:03,240
Speaker 1: with his own experimentation and uh, you know, they the

554
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 1: two only worked together again for like four years before

555
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,320
Speaker 1: Nives passed away. It was the eighteen thirty three, and

556
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: they were unable to come up with with anything that

557
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 1: really worked that really solved the problem. But it's sort

558
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: of I think this set to gear on on a

559
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: productive road so to get continued work here on this uh.

560
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 1: And apparently by by eighteen thirty eight he had a

561
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:27,959
Speaker 1: process worked out that was pretty solid, and by eighteen

562
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 1: thirty nine he was actually ready to share it around

563
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: to show it to people potential investors made right um,

564
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: and he showed it to various French luminaries and finally

565
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: to the French Academies of Science and Art. Yes. And

566
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 1: this process of taking a photograph that he revealed in

567
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine, this is what became known as the

568
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:54,520
Speaker 1: Guero type. Right. And again, like all these other photographic

569
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 1: processes we've been talking about, it sounds like nothing short

570
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 1: of an alchemical act of wonder. Here's how it's described

571
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 1: by Malcolm Daniel from the Department of Photographs at the

572
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Museum of Art. YEA, he's got several good essays

573
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:11,560
Speaker 1: that you can easily find on about the history of photography. Quote,

574
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 1: the process revealed on that day seemed magical. Each Degara

575
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,280
Speaker 1: type is a remarkably detailed, one of a kind photographic

576
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: image on a highly polished silver plated sheet of copper

577
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a large box camera,

578
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:32,360
Speaker 1: developed in mercury fumes, and stabilized or fixed with salt

579
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: water or hypo sodium theo sulfa. Right, So, so do

580
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,200
Speaker 1: get picked up on the work that others had done

581
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: with silver based compounds. Remember from the last episode, Uh,

582
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 1: Tom Wedgewood's shadow grams or photograms were made by painting

583
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 1: a surface with silver nitrate before exposure, uh. And then

584
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: the areas that were exposed to light would darken, but

585
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 1: eventually the whole thing, of course, in Wedgewood's photo photograms

586
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: would darken all over when they were exposed to more

587
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 1: bright light. So could they couldn't fix the image, It

588
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: wouldn't stay there without continuing to expose and degrade. And

589
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: to Gara's method solved that problem. So to explain a

590
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 1: little more fully, so his method involved, at first, you

591
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: would create a light sensitive silver compound. By you'd start

592
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 1: with a plate like a copper plate that had a

593
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:22,880
Speaker 1: silver treatment of silver coating on one side, and this

594
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: would be the surface on which the image was projected. Okay,

595
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: on the silver surface. Then you take the silver coated

596
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: surface and you would expose it to iodine vapors, and

597
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: these iodine vapors would react with the silver to produce

598
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: silver iodide. A silver iodide is also highly photosensitive, and

599
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 1: bits of it that are exposed to light quickly darkened

600
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 1: as they break down into particles of metallic silver. Uh So,

601
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:49,719
Speaker 1: once the plate was made sensitive to light by turning

602
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:53,720
Speaker 1: its surface to this to contain the silver iodide, of course,

603
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 1: during this whole process and needs to be kept dark, right,

604
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 1: it would then be exposed to light on the back

605
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:01,479
Speaker 1: wall of a camera or obscura right, So you'd use

606
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:04,240
Speaker 1: the camera obscure process, but instead of just projecting on

607
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 1: the wall, you'd project on this plate that that was

608
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: now covered in silver iodide. And then of course the

609
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 1: silver iodide would react with the light in proportion to

610
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: how much light there was on every little bit of

611
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:18,759
Speaker 1: the surface, which would make a copy of the image. Now, Originally,

612
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: there was still a problem here in that, like Nieps's process,

613
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 1: this really required extremely long exposure times, which is not

614
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: practical if you want to capture anything that's moving or

615
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: living or you know, or dynamic in any way. But

616
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: Doge got around this by employing the concept of chemically

617
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: quote developing the photograph kind of like you would do

618
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: when you develop photos today, when you go into a

619
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:46,800
Speaker 1: dark room, right, you put a photo into the developing liquid,

620
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: and originally there's something on it that's invisible to you.

621
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:52,760
Speaker 1: You can't even see it, but the developing liquid brings

622
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,840
Speaker 1: out the image. And this meant a brief exposure to

623
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,040
Speaker 1: a light based image, maybe just a few minutes, could

624
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:03,800
Speaker 1: be developed by exposing the plate to mercury fumes, making

625
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: the reaction more dramatic and bringing out the contrast in

626
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: the image between the light and dark areas on the plate.

627
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 1: And then finally, the process would fix the image so

628
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: that further exposure to light wouldn't darken any more of

629
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,319
Speaker 1: the silver iodide. Uh. And the way they did that

630
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 1: is they would wash the plate off with hot salt water,

631
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 1: which would remove whatever silver iodide remained and then give

632
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:29,400
Speaker 1: you a stable, fixed image on your reflective silver plate.

633
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: So to get revealed them the methods. But he retained

634
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:35,520
Speaker 1: a patent on the equipment and he received a lifetime

635
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 1: pension in exchange from the academies. Yeah, which that's a

636
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:41,799
Speaker 1: clever move. So you give him a pension so he

637
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,600
Speaker 1: doesn't need to keep making money off of like enforcing

638
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: a license on the process, right, so other people can

639
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:51,439
Speaker 1: use the Jaguero type process. And this process would reign

640
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 1: supreme for like twenty years because he was like, yeah,

641
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 1: you can use it. Yeah. Uh. So another great thing

642
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 1: about history photography is that, as with last episode, uh,

643
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: some of the images, the key important historical images are

644
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,279
Speaker 1: still available today and we can look at them. We

645
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: can they take us back to the earliest days of

646
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:17,799
Speaker 1: a photographic record, in the earliest days of the of

647
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:22,319
Speaker 1: the development of this technology. The earliest I think reliably

648
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:26,440
Speaker 1: dated Daguara type comes from eighteen thirty seven. And uh,

649
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's like a lot of these these images

650
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,439
Speaker 1: that he tested has like some plaster casts and it's

651
00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 1: still life. Uh. And he he'd like to use plaster

652
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:38,959
Speaker 1: casts apparently because they were they were very reflective because

653
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: they're white and they don't move. That being key because

654
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: you're talking in an exposure time of like ten to

655
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,959
Speaker 1: twelve minutes. Here and in eighteen thirty eight he made

656
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 1: the first reliably dated photograph of a human being. And

657
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 1: this this is a famous image and this image is

658
00:36:56,520 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 1: probably gonna be the lead image for this episode. On

659
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: our landing page at invention pod dot com. It was

660
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:08,720
Speaker 1: an eight a m photograph of the busy boulevard Do Tempel.

661
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 1: It sounds French enough, I guess. I mean I'm not

662
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: French either, Do Tempel do Temple spelling Temple. So it's

663
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: a it's a city street escape. But then if you

664
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 1: look to the like lower left hand corner, you can

665
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:27,880
Speaker 1: clearly see a shoeshiner and their customer. They're visible and

666
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 1: uh and and these are the first two human beings photographed.

667
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:34,319
Speaker 1: And it is it's haunting because you look at them

668
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: and it's almost like they're the first humans right, like

669
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:39,640
Speaker 1: you're gazing back in time to see Adam and Eve,

670
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: except instead of Adam and Eve, it's a it's just

671
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 1: this guy getting in his shoe shine. Yeah, but there's

672
00:37:45,120 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: so there are several things that make the image fascinating

673
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: and haunting. One is that, uh, they're the only two

674
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:52,759
Speaker 1: this this big scene of a street. You know, it

675
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:54,360
Speaker 1: seems like you should be able to see lots of

676
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:56,560
Speaker 1: people and maybe there are more hidden somewhere in the background,

677
00:37:56,560 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 1: but since they're closer to the camera, it seems like

678
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 1: they're the only two people in the image. On this

679
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 1: otherwise deserted street, which is a little creepy to begin with, right,

680
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 1: because it looks like what twenty eight days later or

681
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: something exactly, But this was eights playing in the background.

682
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,840
Speaker 1: But this was eight am on a busy of French Street.

683
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 1: So in actuality there are people moving all over the place,

684
00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:24,919
Speaker 1: but since the exposure time was so long, these were

685
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 1: apparently the only two individuals who were not moving and

686
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:31,759
Speaker 1: therefore the only ones we see. There's all this like

687
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:36,320
Speaker 1: invisible motion, invisible activity that's just lost to us. And

688
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 1: so when you think about that, the image is even crazier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

689
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:41,759
Speaker 1: I mean there's some other figures. It's hard to pick

690
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: out exactly what. There are some other figures that could

691
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:47,120
Speaker 1: be humans in here, I'm not positive. But another thing

692
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 1: about them is that they're um like the buildings are

693
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 1: sharper in the image than the people are. The people

694
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:57,279
Speaker 1: are kind of like phantoms. They're like shadow people in

695
00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: the image, probably because they were moving a little bit

696
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,879
Speaker 1: it right. Anyways, it's a remarkable image. You've probably seen

697
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:06,239
Speaker 1: it before, but if you haven't, check it out, Like

698
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:07,719
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going to make sure that it's on

699
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode at invention pot dot com.

700
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 1: I mean all of the earliest photos make me feel

701
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: a little creepy. Oh yeah, I mean you're gazing back

702
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 1: in time, right, Yeah, I mean, I guess you always

703
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:21,759
Speaker 1: are when you look at a photo, but especially in

704
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: this case, because you're you're getting closer to that. It's

705
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 1: almost like reaching the ends of the earth, right, the

706
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: ends of the photographic record. And granted people look like

707
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: people before that as well, in the same way that

708
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of strange when you're like, oh, the

709
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: first color pictures, you know, as if the world was

710
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: black and white before these images came and came around. Yeah,

711
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard for us who are used to

712
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: photography to appreciate how bizarre and mystical and earth shaking

713
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:51,800
Speaker 1: this technology was. I I found an article that Edgar

714
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 1: Allan Poe wrote about this invention. He wrote about the

715
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:59,399
Speaker 1: Jaguaro type in eighteen forty in a Philadelphia publication called

716
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,440
Speaker 1: alex Unders Weekly Messenger. Did you come across this, Rob?

717
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: I did not, but I'm not surprised because Poe, as

718
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 1: we recently discussed on stuff to bow your mind, you know,

719
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 1: not only a writer of of these maccab tales, but

720
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 1: also wrote about science. Yeah, number one, he says, quote

721
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: the instrument itself must undoubtedly be regarded as the most

722
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 1: important and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science.

723
00:40:24,960 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 1: So he's already going all in um. But then he

724
00:40:28,680 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: goes into more depth about why this is quote. All

725
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: language must fall short of conveying any just idea of

726
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,879
Speaker 1: the truth. And this will not appear so wonderful when

727
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 1: we reflect that the source of vision itself has been,

728
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: in this instance the designer. Perhaps, if we imagine the

729
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 1: distinctness with which an image is reflected in a positively

730
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:55,920
Speaker 1: perfect mirror, we come as near the reality as by

731
00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:59,720
Speaker 1: any other means. For in truth, the Daguero typed plate

732
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: is infinitely we use the term advisedly, is infinitely more

733
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 1: accurate in its representation than any painting by human hands.

734
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 1: If we examine a work of ordinary art by means

735
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:17,720
Speaker 1: of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature

736
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 1: will disappear. But the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing

737
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:27,279
Speaker 1: discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity

738
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 1: of aspect with the thing represented. The variations of shade

739
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 1: and the gradations of both linear and aerial perspective are

740
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:39,759
Speaker 1: those of truth itself in the suprem nous of its perfection.

741
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 1: So to come back to da Gear, you know, his

742
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:44,680
Speaker 1: again his background was was heavily artistic, but he also

743
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 1: realized the scientific possibilities, you know, in part I imagine

744
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 1: by talking to various French luminaries who had interest in

745
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:55,400
Speaker 1: the sciences. But he ended up wowing people with photos

746
00:41:55,640 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: not only of you know, bits of sculpture and in

747
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: the street scenes, but also photos of fossils. A dead

748
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: spider really excited some folks, as did a Deguara type

749
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:10,120
Speaker 1: of the moon. That's right, and that that combination of

750
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: interests in the arts and the sciences came together I

751
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: think when it was first presented, Because the official debut

752
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: of the Daguero type process was in eighteen thirty nine.

753
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:22,760
Speaker 1: One of the events here was on August nineteen, eighteen

754
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: thirty nine, when Degara gave an explanation of the process

755
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 1: before a joint session of the French Academy of Sciences

756
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:32,240
Speaker 1: and the Academy of Fine Arts UM. But of course

757
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:35,760
Speaker 1: we should point out that the deguerotype does have limitations.

758
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,400
Speaker 1: Even though the images are in many ways still quite

759
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:42,759
Speaker 1: striking today. One of the limitations is that, um, it's

760
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: not making a negative, it's making a positive image on

761
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,960
Speaker 1: a highly reflective silver surface, which meant that the image

762
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:54,120
Speaker 1: could only be viewed from certain angles and ideally like

763
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 1: needed to be viewed when reflecting a dark surface in

764
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:00,000
Speaker 1: front of it. If you were to make a daguerotype

765
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 1: reflect a light surface, the deguerotype kind of looks like

766
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 1: a negative of itself. Another problem, of course, is that you're,

767
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with metal plates, right, which are ultimately

768
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 1: not going to be as uh convenient for people as say,

769
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: like printing on some kind of paper. Yeah. Each dagarattype,

770
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:21,279
Speaker 1: it's important to note, is a one of a kind production.

771
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: So when when if you were to go to get

772
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:27,400
Speaker 1: a deguarat type taken of something, and there wasn't a

773
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:29,920
Speaker 1: question of how many copies you would need and and

774
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: do you want a wallet size with that, you could

775
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 1: make a copy of a degaratype, And the way you

776
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: do it is you take it to de guaratype of

777
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:39,720
Speaker 1: the deguarat type. Well yes, but but but as you's

778
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: gonna imagine, like that was not a tremendously convenient process, right,

779
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: not as convenient as just getting like a photo negative

780
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 1: that you can that you can copy out multiple times.

781
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 1: So I have a question I've been wondering about, which is,

782
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:56,879
Speaker 1: obviously Degar was very interested in the idea of realism

783
00:43:56,880 --> 00:43:59,200
Speaker 1: in art, improving realism in art. He'd done it with

784
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:03,200
Speaker 1: the pan or ama, the diorama, and then with ultimately

785
00:44:03,239 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: the Daguera type. Is photography necessarily in line with Daguerre's quest?

786
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, it seems like the answers

787
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:12,200
Speaker 1: obviously yes, and I think it probably did fall in

788
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:15,319
Speaker 1: line with Daguerre's quest. And also when you consider the

789
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:19,560
Speaker 1: you know, what were the ideal aspects of artistic pursuit

790
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:22,640
Speaker 1: of the time, which we touched on in the last episode. Yeah, exactly.

791
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,359
Speaker 1: But it also does make me ask the question, well,

792
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:29,240
Speaker 1: what actually is realism? Because we've already discussed the ways

793
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:33,280
Speaker 1: that any fixed two D representation of the world, however

794
00:44:33,400 --> 00:44:36,480
Speaker 1: automatic and objective, like made by a camera instead of

795
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,279
Speaker 1: by a human hand, is not exactly the same as

796
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,320
Speaker 1: what the physical world really is, which is three D

797
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:45,360
Speaker 1: and actually for D because it's always changing over time.

798
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: What if the photograph actually helped make art more realistic

799
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 1: in the sense of a photograph, like more like the

800
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: image of a photograph. Are there types of scenes in

801
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 1: reality that might be more realist stickley conveyed by less

802
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: objective fixed medium like painting, at least until like motion

803
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,359
Speaker 1: pictures come along. Yeah, I mean it makes me think

804
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: of say impressionism for instance. Um, you know, there's a

805
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:15,840
Speaker 1: it's certainly you get you get closer to the image,

806
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 1: you see the it falls apart in the same way

807
00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 1: that that earlier description was talking about, you know how

808
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:26,440
Speaker 1: from Edgar Allen Poe. But at the same time, when

809
00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: you think about how we actually view reality, about how

810
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:32,840
Speaker 1: our minds process uh this uh the sense data and

811
00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:36,880
Speaker 1: kind of stitched together and form something concrete out of

812
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:41,759
Speaker 1: things that are at times vaguely perceived, it makes me

813
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 1: think that, well, when I'm looking at a monet, perhaps

814
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:48,280
Speaker 1: like that is more in line with how my brain

815
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:52,239
Speaker 1: is processing reality as opposed to the uh you know,

816
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:55,959
Speaker 1: the the the objectivity of of a pure photograph. Yeah,

817
00:45:55,960 --> 00:45:58,360
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean, certainly a photograph is going to

818
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:01,759
Speaker 1: be more object of a realistic in a certain sense

819
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 1: in that like it's directly sampling the light rays that

820
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:07,560
Speaker 1: are actually there and would be hitting your eye in

821
00:46:07,640 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: that instant moment when you were looking at a thing,

822
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 1: And I guess human painting is never going to capture

823
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 1: that level of objectivity. But there there are ways in

824
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 1: which I wonder if, especially in scenes that are moving,

825
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:24,759
Speaker 1: that that painting suggests things to the mind that are

826
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: more more accurately suggestive of what memories or impressions say

827
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:34,400
Speaker 1: of a scene are like than a photo is. Yeah,

828
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 1: and uh and again it it is hard to really

829
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:40,560
Speaker 1: wrapprehend our heads around all of that because I do

830
00:46:40,600 --> 00:46:44,319
Speaker 1: think we are so influenced by photographs and we think

831
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:48,359
Speaker 1: of our memories as photographs or as motion pictures when

832
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 1: they're they're really not quite the same at all. Yeah, alright, well,

833
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 1: I think we should take another break and then when

834
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: we come back we will discuss a rival of Dagar's,

835
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: Henry Fox Talbot. Alright, so we're we're back, and we're

836
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: leaving France, we're entering England, and we're dealing with the

837
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: other major individual, uh from this time period in the

838
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: birth of photography. Right, So, around the same time Degere

839
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:19,800
Speaker 1: was experimenting with ways to capture the light, and of

840
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:22,719
Speaker 1: course remember we we didn't mention again, but In one

841
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 1: of the earlier episodes, we mentioned that Degare wrote this

842
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 1: letter to a friend of his, you know, when he

843
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: had perfected the process, where he said, I have captured

844
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: the light and arrested its flight. The sun itself shall

845
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:35,800
Speaker 1: draw my pictures. It seems fitting for the kind of

846
00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:38,600
Speaker 1: guy to Gea was kind of a grandiose artist, right,

847
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,320
Speaker 1: He's he's making Uh he's sort of like I've become

848
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 1: a god. Um. But anyway, so yeah, Around the same

849
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: time that Degare was doing these experiments, an Englishman named

850
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 1: Henry Fox Talbot who lived eighteen eighteen seventy seven, had

851
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:57,800
Speaker 1: independently been working on the invention of photography, and according

852
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,400
Speaker 1: to several people who tell the story, he he was

853
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: sort of inspired by a simple limitation, which is that

854
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 1: he couldn't really draw. That's gonna hold you back, Yeah, yeah, exactly.

855
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,279
Speaker 1: So unlike to Gere, who was a natural artist but

856
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 1: was not really trained as a scientist, Henry Talbot was

857
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:19,400
Speaker 1: sort of a natural scientist. Like he grew up shy, intelligent, inquisitive.

858
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:22,359
Speaker 1: He was a boy of the English aristocracy, so he had,

859
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: you know, he had leisure and means to do experiments

860
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:28,719
Speaker 1: and to be kind of the gentleman scientist of the day, right,

861
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: and so he had leisure and means to do experiments,

862
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:33,279
Speaker 1: and he was known for doing lots of them. He like,

863
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 1: he had a reputation for doing chemistry experiments in his

864
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:40,359
Speaker 1: house that caused explosions, much to the amusement of his mother.

865
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:42,760
Speaker 1: Uh and I think to the worry of at least

866
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:45,680
Speaker 1: people who they were trying to get insurance policies from.

867
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: But he grew up with an interest in mathematics and

868
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:52,879
Speaker 1: the natural sciences, including botany and astronomy as well as chemistry.

869
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 1: But he was, you know, one of those people. He

870
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:57,080
Speaker 1: had lots of interests. He was interested in ancient Egypt,

871
00:48:57,200 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 1: in the you know, sculpture and the fine arts and

872
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,800
Speaker 1: all that. Uh. He went on to become a graduate

873
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 1: of Trinity College, Cambridge, and eventually he was a Liberal

874
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: MP in the House of Commons. Now, remember in the

875
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:09,359
Speaker 1: last episode we had a section where we talked about

876
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: the many things that photography fundamentally changed when it was invented.

877
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: And one thing, of course was realism and art, but

878
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: another thing was accuracy in science. If you have an

879
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:23,480
Speaker 1: interest in botany like Henry Fox Talbot did, and you

880
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: want to make observations about a species of plant, like

881
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: documenting the vascular structure of the leaves of a plant,

882
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: or describing the gonads of a flowering plant. You today

883
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:38,719
Speaker 1: can take a picture, but before that, before you could

884
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:41,320
Speaker 1: take a picture, you needed to be able to draw

885
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 1: what you were making observations about. And so there's a

886
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:47,719
Speaker 1: story told in another one of these essays by the

887
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:51,040
Speaker 1: photo historian Malcolm Daniel about when Henry Fox Talbot was

888
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: on his honeymoon in Italy in eighteen thirty three. He

889
00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: was trying to sketch a picture of a lake called

890
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:00,080
Speaker 1: Lake Como, and uh, he of course did not have

891
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:02,719
Speaker 1: Daguerre's natural talent for drawing, but he did have the

892
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: aid of an optical device. In this case, it was

893
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:08,160
Speaker 1: not a camera obscura, though he had used those before,

894
00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:12,000
Speaker 1: but it was a camera lucida, camera lucidam, which is

895
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:16,000
Speaker 1: Latin for a bright room or a well lit room.

896
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 1: And this was sort of like I was trying to

897
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:19,560
Speaker 1: think of a good way to describe it, it's almost

898
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: kind of like an augmented reality device. It was a

899
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: refraction lens that you could position above a piece of

900
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:30,440
Speaker 1: paper or other surface. That you wanted to draw on,

901
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 1: and then the lens would capture the image that you

902
00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: aimed at at and then refracted about ninety degrees, so

903
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:39,720
Speaker 1: you could look through the lens down at the paper

904
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 1: you're drawing on and see a version of the object

905
00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: or image in front of you superimposed onto this blank canvas.

906
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: And then of course this could aid you in tracing

907
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:53,360
Speaker 1: or reproducing. But unfortunately Talbot discovered that even with the

908
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:56,760
Speaker 1: aid of a camera Lucida, he was unable to reproduce

909
00:50:56,800 --> 00:50:59,839
Speaker 1: images of the natural world accurate, accurately in a way

910
00:50:59,880 --> 00:51:03,160
Speaker 1: that satisfied him. And just as a side note, this

911
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: is funny. I'm picturing this image of him on his

912
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:09,799
Speaker 1: honeymoon and he's got a camera Lucida and he's trying

913
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:12,880
Speaker 1: to draw, and it reminds me of like Dover Beach

914
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:16,239
Speaker 1: by Matthew Arnold, you know, another like nineteenth century englishman

915
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 1: being insufferable and self serious on his honeymoon. These are

916
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 1: the very guys that would just be on their their

917
00:51:21,960 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: phone the whole time if such a technology hadn't had

918
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: existed during their hunt. Right, yeah, what are you doing, honey?

919
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:33,919
Speaker 1: Ignorant armies are clashing by night so Talbot was trying

920
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 1: to use technology to make up for his um is

921
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: lacking artistic skill. Yeah, and he was unsatisfied with what

922
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 1: he could do, even with the aid of a camera

923
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:46,560
Speaker 1: lucida or a camera obscura. But he wondered would it

924
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:50,319
Speaker 1: be possible to capture the kind of image projected in

925
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 1: a camera obscura? And he he wrote, quote, how charming

926
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 1: it would be if it were possible to cause these

927
00:51:56,680 --> 00:52:01,720
Speaker 1: natural images to imprint themselves durably remain fixed upon the paper.

928
00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:05,640
Speaker 1: So he's got the bug to write the photography inspiration

929
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 1: germ has implanted itself in young Henry Fox Talbot's brain.

930
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:14,280
Speaker 1: And this was around eighteen thirty three, eighteen thirty four,

931
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 1: so this was before Dagare had developed and refined his

932
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:22,319
Speaker 1: process in France, and Talbot set about conducting experiments to

933
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 1: discover a method of capturing the image, originally working off

934
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,560
Speaker 1: the same types of chemicals we've talked about several times already,

935
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:34,600
Speaker 1: photosensitive silver compounds like silver nitrate, silver chloride, and eventually

936
00:52:34,960 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: silver iodide like Deger's method uses. Now remember Gear was

937
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: using metal plates like copper plates treated with a silver coating.

938
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: That would be the reactive surface, but Talbot was going for,

939
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:52,840
Speaker 1: I guess, a less durable method, so he was exposing

940
00:52:52,880 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: the image on treated paper. So while de Garat types

941
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:59,320
Speaker 1: produced superior quality images, again each one was one of

942
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:02,480
Speaker 1: a kind. Abot's method, though, could produce an unlimited number

943
00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 1: of prints from a single negative. Yeah, So unlike the

944
00:53:05,360 --> 00:53:09,280
Speaker 1: Digerat type method, which produced a positive image, the Talbot

945
00:53:09,320 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: method was would produce a photo negative like we're used

946
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 1: to seeing come out of a camera today, and this

947
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:17,160
Speaker 1: would be on a like a piece of paper treated

948
00:53:17,239 --> 00:53:21,160
Speaker 1: with some kind of silver based solution. Unfortunately for Talbot,

949
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 1: he worked on most of this privately for years, and

950
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 1: even though he had already discovered a lot of the

951
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 1: principles of photography in the mid eighteen thirties, did Gear

952
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:35,319
Speaker 1: beat him to announcing and publicly demonstrating the process. And

953
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 1: Doge's photos just looked better because of differences in materials

954
00:53:40,040 --> 00:53:43,080
Speaker 1: and methods. They were more durable and more impressive to

955
00:53:43,160 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 1: look at generally than Talbot's. And again, house it just

956
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:48,759
Speaker 1: had a greater level of detail. That's right now. One

957
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:53,040
Speaker 1: of Talbot's important contributions to the process of photography was

958
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:56,879
Speaker 1: actually suggested to him by his friend John Herschel, who

959
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 1: was the son of the astronomer William Herschel who discovered

960
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: planet Uranus uh now John Herschel. And remember that sorry

961
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:08,080
Speaker 1: the Dagara type method, it used hot salt water originally

962
00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:10,920
Speaker 1: or earlier on to fix the image on the plate

963
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 1: by washing off any remaining sodium iodide, and this would

964
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 1: stop the image from continuing to react when exposed to light.

965
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: Over time, it would fix the image so it stayed

966
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:24,719
Speaker 1: like it was. And this fixing method was only sort of,

967
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: only partially effective. Herschel suggested instead of just washing with

968
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:33,799
Speaker 1: hot saltwater, using hypo sulfite of soda instead, which was

969
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:37,200
Speaker 1: a much more useful fixer than regular salt. So that's

970
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:41,719
Speaker 1: an important chemical insight. But in the early years, unfortunately

971
00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:44,880
Speaker 1: for Talbot, his process was not anywhere near as close

972
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:47,719
Speaker 1: to to a success as to gears. It was the

973
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:49,799
Speaker 1: age of the Dagara type after this, and I guess

974
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: we'll explore more about the age of the Dagara type

975
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: in the next episode. But digs process was just much

976
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 1: more popular for several reasons. Number one, I think because

977
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:03,359
Speaker 1: digars images were more durable and they were clear, you know,

978
00:55:03,400 --> 00:55:06,920
Speaker 1: they were sharp and clear and they looked really good, whereas, uh,

979
00:55:07,160 --> 00:55:10,799
Speaker 1: whereas Talbot's images were more kind of like hazy and ephemeral.

980
00:55:11,280 --> 00:55:14,359
Speaker 1: And also Talbot tried to patent the process and make

981
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:16,560
Speaker 1: money off of it, whereas to get you know, I

982
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:20,080
Speaker 1: think to Garrett, he patented his equipment. Equipment was patented,

983
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 1: but not but not the process, so anybody could go

984
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:25,840
Speaker 1: out and do it exactly. But this brings this episode

985
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: brings us really to to the birth of photography, the

986
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 1: Guero type age. Yeah. Um. And in the next episode

987
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:37,120
Speaker 1: of the show, we're going to continue with photography, and

988
00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 1: I think the next episodes really kind of be kind

989
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:43,920
Speaker 1: of a bridge between photography and the in the moving image,

990
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: in the motion picture, because that's also part of our

991
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 1: our ongoing trajectory on the show. But in the next

992
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:53,920
Speaker 1: episode we'll get into into some of the advancements that

993
00:55:54,040 --> 00:55:59,239
Speaker 1: also took the the photograph out of the hands of

994
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: the elite and made it more of of of a

995
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: technology that could be utilized by more or less everyday people,

996
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:11,440
Speaker 1: and we'll get into just continually discussed just how it

997
00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:14,440
Speaker 1: changed the world and how difficult it is for us

998
00:56:14,480 --> 00:56:18,440
Speaker 1: to really really grasp the idea of a pre photographic

999
00:56:18,520 --> 00:56:21,640
Speaker 1: world exactly. I'm excited for next time. In the meantime,

1000
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 1: if you want to check out more episodes of Invention,

1001
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:26,319
Speaker 1: if you want to see that that image that I

1002
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:28,760
Speaker 1: was discussing earlier, and maybe I'll throw a secondary image

1003
00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:31,000
Speaker 1: on there as well, you can find the landing page

1004
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:35,200
Speaker 1: for this episode at invention pod dot com. Um Also,

1005
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 1: if you want to support the show, which of course

1006
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:39,879
Speaker 1: we encourage you to do, the best thing you can

1007
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:42,040
Speaker 1: do is make sure that you rate and review us

1008
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:44,040
Speaker 1: wherever you have the power to do so, and make

1009
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:47,440
Speaker 1: sure you have subscribed to Invention. Huge thanks to our

1010
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: buddy Scott Benjamin for research assistance and to our excellent

1011
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:54,480
Speaker 1: audio producer Torri Harrison. If you would like to get

1012
00:56:54,520 --> 00:56:56,799
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

1013
00:56:56,800 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just

1014
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can contact us at our email address,

1015
00:57:03,239 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 1: which is contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is

1016
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my

1017
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:18,400
Speaker 1: Heart Radio is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1018
00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:24,920
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H