Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Land, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back today to discuss a little
Speaker 1: bit more in the history of photography, the invention of
Speaker 1: the first identifiable photographs. Now we've already done sort of
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes on this subject. We just had
Speaker 1: a whole episode about the camera obscura, the the idea
Speaker 1: that a closed, darkened chamber with a pinhole aperture will
Speaker 1: project images from the outside world on a on a
Speaker 1: darkened wall, upside down and inverted, and how this has
Speaker 1: been used in say, the history of art, and how
Speaker 1: it was discovered. But then in the last episode we
Speaker 1: started talking about the precursors to modern photography. So we
Speaker 1: talked about Johann Heinrich Schultz and silver nitrate, his discovery
Speaker 1: about how silver nitrate darkens when exposed to light. We
Speaker 1: talked about Tom Wedgewood, the dream Boy, and Humphrey Davy
Speaker 1: and their experiments with what came to be called photograms
Speaker 1: or shadow grams, also based on silver nitrate. And we
Speaker 1: talked about Joseph Nissafgnieps and heliography, which involved like put
Speaker 1: putting like bitumen on a on a plate and then
Speaker 1: exposing it to light and then washing off the parts
Speaker 1: that hadn't hardened. And so I guess we should remember
Speaker 1: where this technology was where it was left after Tom
Speaker 1: Wedgwood and Humphrey Davy's shadow grams. We we had figured
Speaker 1: out that you can cote, say a piece of leather
Speaker 1: or piece of glass or something any kind of surface
Speaker 1: with silver nitrate based solution and fix images or silhouettes
Speaker 1: onto the surface with light. But the problem was they
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out how to fix this image so that
Speaker 1: it was durable when exposed to more light. They needed
Speaker 1: a way of preventing additional exposure to light from corrupting
Speaker 1: the original image. So I'm really enjoying this exploration into photography, uh,
Speaker 1: in part because it's just so much more to it
Speaker 1: than I initially realized. It's huge. Yeah, and I felt
Speaker 1: like I had like a pretty good grasp of the
Speaker 1: history of photography and the invention of photography. Um, but
Speaker 1: when you when you start digging into it and uh
Speaker 1: and really stopping to consider this this weird almost alchemical
Speaker 1: process of early photography. Um, you know, it's so easy
Speaker 1: to take take it for granted nowadays, with our our
Speaker 1: instant digital imagery, that is just h and it's just
Speaker 1: like magic, and we don't think about it. We've become
Speaker 1: immune to the magic. We've we've become immune to it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really helpful to to take it
Speaker 1: apart and look back at how we made these advancements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course, remember you make that comparison to alchemy.
Speaker 1: But Isaac Newton almost explicitly made that comparison. And remember
Speaker 1: he talked about that it was a part of nature,
Speaker 1: that that nature loves transmutation, you know, this terminology transmutation,
Speaker 1: like the transmutation of lead into gold, which of course
Speaker 1: the alchemists wanted to do but I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: way to do and ultimately was a fool's errand because
Speaker 1: they didn't understand things about nuclear chemistry, and you know
Speaker 1: why that couldn't happen. But even though he's wrong in
Speaker 1: his kind of alchemy based leaning is Isaac Newton does
Speaker 1: make this comparison in the realm of light. He says
Speaker 1: that light may well want to be transmuted into bodies
Speaker 1: by nature might want to be transmuted into material changes
Speaker 1: in substances you can hold in your hand. And of
Speaker 1: course this is exactly the chemistry behind what would become photography,
Speaker 1: light causing changes in substance. Yeah, and you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things about the invention of photography too, I
Speaker 1: think it's a great it's a great model for invention
Speaker 1: to consider past inventions we've discussed and future inventions, um,
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to certain questions, and one of
Speaker 1: the big questions that we've we've loved to ask in
Speaker 1: regards to invention is why now, why not earlier? Why
Speaker 1: was any given invention? Why did it come to fruition
Speaker 1: at this particular time time and not an earlier time?
Speaker 1: And indeed, there have been there's been some consideration on
Speaker 1: this regarding Schultz's silver nitrate discoveries and why photography didn't
Speaker 1: take off in the early seventeen hundreds. And granted we're
Speaker 1: not talking about a huge lapse here. This is one
Speaker 1: of those situations where a technology comes around, it's forgotten
Speaker 1: for centuries or millennia. But but but it has led
Speaker 1: many people to wonder, like, you know, why is there
Speaker 1: this gap? Um? And uh, I when I was looking
Speaker 1: into this I found a wonderful arts in society. That's
Speaker 1: the website um story titled why wasn't Photography invented Earlier?
Speaker 1: By Philip mccott. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's
Speaker 1: a h MC C O U A T. If you
Speaker 1: want to look look up this paper. But the author
Speaker 1: points out that this question was pondered in the highly
Speaker 1: influential History of Photography by the Gersheims uh quote. The
Speaker 1: circumstance that photography was not invented earlier remains the greatest
Speaker 1: mystery in its history. I don't I mean, that's always
Speaker 1: a fun question to ask, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's always as piercing a question as the people asking
Speaker 1: it think it is, because technology always seems obvious looking back.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I mean, why wasn't the wheel
Speaker 1: invented earlier? We talked about this in the Wheel episode.
Speaker 1: We we don't know the answer. Maybe one answer as given.
Speaker 1: I think it was the hypothesis of Richard Bullet in
Speaker 1: that book we talked about was that the wheel just
Speaker 1: wasn't really necessary until you had certain very specific types
Speaker 1: of transportation scenarios. His his hypothesis is that that would
Speaker 1: be copper mining. This is you know, the wheel showed
Speaker 1: up there, because it's a scenario where a wheel makes
Speaker 1: a huge difference compared to say a normal pack animal
Speaker 1: that would have been used for thousands of years before that.
Speaker 1: But on like stuff to blow your mind. We've also
Speaker 1: asked questions about basic electrical technologies. Why didn't the ancient
Speaker 1: Romans have friction generators or capacitors. They could have had those.
Speaker 1: There's nothing stopping them from having these objects. They just
Speaker 1: never really did it or not that we know of
Speaker 1: for sure. And so a lot of times it's just
Speaker 1: hard to come up with a satisfactory explanation. But I
Speaker 1: think we should we should also question ourselves here and
Speaker 1: question the assumptions we're making when we ask that question
Speaker 1: with with with like an accusatory tone. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: mccatt does a great job of sort of tackling this
Speaker 1: on two fronts. So, so first of all, he sort
Speaker 1: of he he looks at some of the the counter
Speaker 1: evidence to this whole mystery, right, and he points out
Speaker 1: that Schultz's discoveries were probably not as widespread as some
Speaker 1: historians may have interpreted, uh, and that the man's presentation
Speaker 1: to the Imperial Academy in Nuremberg went quote largely unnoticed,
Speaker 1: and it is work wouldn't see actual publication go after
Speaker 1: his death, and his work was very likely difficult to
Speaker 1: access and not considered of much value at the time. Quote. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: those who actually were familiar with it were more likely
Speaker 1: to have come across it in popular books on amusing
Speaker 1: parlor tricks rather than in scientific journals. Yeah, like, try
Speaker 1: to forget photography exists and pretend you just don't know
Speaker 1: that this is even possible. Somebody demonstrates to you that
Speaker 1: a bottle holding a slurry of silver nitrate, you can
Speaker 1: make letters in the side of the bottle with a
Speaker 1: stencil by exposing those areas to light, and then you
Speaker 1: shake the bottle and they go away. Do you immediately conclude, Ah,
Speaker 1: I can fix images of the natural world. I'm not
Speaker 1: so sure that's obvious to people who do not have
Speaker 1: our photography adult brains. But to be clear, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a hundred years or so. Still, that's a considerable
Speaker 1: chunk of time. Right. So Schultze's experiments with silver nitrate
Speaker 1: darkening and a bottle that was in the seventeen teens,
Speaker 1: like seventeen seventeen, and then we had Tom Wedgewood and
Speaker 1: Humphrey Davy around the turn of the eighteen hundreds. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get to today Henry Fox Talbot and
Speaker 1: Louis de Gare, who come up with what's really definitely
Speaker 1: something that counts as photography around the eighteen thirties, towards
Speaker 1: the end of the eighteen thirty. Now, another important to
Speaker 1: effect that mccau points out here is that, of course
Speaker 1: you have to have uh, some other key and advancements
Speaker 1: come along in chemistry to make photography, the further evolution
Speaker 1: of of photography really possible exactly. I mean, because as
Speaker 1: we're going to see, like Dagarin Talbot's processes are more
Speaker 1: chemically complicated than what these earlier people were trying to do. Right,
Speaker 1: So specifically you need the isolation and production of both
Speaker 1: iodine and bromine. But in addition to all of this, uh.
Speaker 1: Mccau does a good job too of ruminating on the
Speaker 1: role of hindsight in all of these matters. It's easy
Speaker 1: for us to say, why didn't someone think of that earlier?
Speaker 1: Like here are the pieces uh, And he points to
Speaker 1: a particular study on hindsight bias. Um. This one was
Speaker 1: a one by a Mandel patently non obvious empirical demonstration
Speaker 1: that the hindsight bias renders patent decisions irrational from Ohio
Speaker 1: State Law Journal in two in twenty in two thousand six. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what Mandel find here? Well, so the key takeaways
Speaker 1: from this are seventy of people who have been told
Speaker 1: that a solution had actually been found considered that this
Speaker 1: solution would have been obvious. Twenty percent of people who
Speaker 1: had not been told that a solution had been found
Speaker 1: felt that the solution would be obvious, and this held
Speaker 1: true even when subjects were warned against the dangers of
Speaker 1: hindsight bias. Okay, so just telling somebody people have already
Speaker 1: figured out X, even if maybe it's something they didn't
Speaker 1: already know about, makes it seem obvious to them exactly
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, I think this this, Uh, this falls
Speaker 1: in a little bit with the potential dangers of narrative thinking,
Speaker 1: which we recently discussed on our other podcast, Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. Um. It seems that when we learn
Speaker 1: of an outcome, such as something from the history of invention,
Speaker 1: we incorporate that ending into the story of the events,
Speaker 1: and therefore the end becomes seemingly inevitable. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: always a part of narrative. Like when you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of a movie, you're thinking, how's it going to end?
Speaker 1: But then when you get to the end, you're like,
Speaker 1: that was obvious. Of course it had to end that way.
Speaker 1: Of course they were going to invent photography, right. But
Speaker 1: his Macca points out, you know, some people have have
Speaker 1: certainly disagreed on the inevitable nature of photography. Author Cee Clark,
Speaker 1: for instance, who in addition to writing science fiction, wrote
Speaker 1: a lot about science and the history of science, and
Speaker 1: he considered photography to be one of the sixteen most
Speaker 1: une unexpected inventions. Oh no, I'm this has got me thinking,
Speaker 1: what are the most unexpected inventions we've covered on the
Speaker 1: show so far? X rays have got to be one
Speaker 1: of them, right, that's just out of the blue, no idea.
Speaker 1: X rays is definitely on that list, along with nuclear energy,
Speaker 1: radio lasers, and carbon dating, uh, and of course some others.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones that he highlights in covering Clark's work.
Speaker 1: But uh. He says that one of the key things
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the the entries on Clark's
Speaker 1: list are our inventions that span different disciplines. And again,
Speaker 1: I think to all the things coming together in photography.
Speaker 1: You have the arts with painting, and you have optics,
Speaker 1: and then you have this, uh, this chemical aspect of
Speaker 1: the whole scenario as well. Oh yeah, I mean, much
Speaker 1: like carbon dating that covers so many different disciplines. I mean,
Speaker 1: so that's going to be like physics and nuclear chemistry
Speaker 1: and geology and atmospheric science and archaeology. I think those
Speaker 1: really are also the most exciting kinds of inventions, the
Speaker 1: ones that are not just a an advance in a
Speaker 1: clearly defined discipline, but something that yeah, draws from many
Speaker 1: different sources. Absolutely. All right, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take our first break. But when we come back,
Speaker 1: we are going to get into the next step in
Speaker 1: the evolution of photography. We're gonna be talking about the
Speaker 1: de Guero type. Alright, we're back, So it is time
Speaker 1: to meet one of the major characters in the history
Speaker 1: of photography, maybe the most important character, Louis gere So.
Speaker 1: The last episode we did ended with a discussion of
Speaker 1: Joseph Nissa Fourgnieps and his heliography method which involved using
Speaker 1: various kinds of resin, like originally bitumen and lavender oil
Speaker 1: that would harden when exposed to light, and then the
Speaker 1: unhardened resin could be washed away and this would allow
Speaker 1: hardened patterns of resin to form the basis of a
Speaker 1: heliograph inside a camera box. And you could probably argue
Speaker 1: that this did in some sense constitute photography as we
Speaker 1: understand it. But the exposures took a really long time.
Speaker 1: You might have to expose them for hours or even days,
Speaker 1: and the resin was just not the best medium for
Speaker 1: recording images. But this process becomes important mainly because of
Speaker 1: the way that Nieps ended up partnering with this guy
Speaker 1: named Louis de Gere, and they worked together for several years,
Speaker 1: I think, beginning in eighteen twenty nine, right, and then
Speaker 1: Nips died in eighteen thirty three at the age of
Speaker 1: sixty eight. Uh So, really a lot of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about today is like where did you go from there?
Speaker 1: Like Nips passes his discoveries off to the gear and
Speaker 1: then and then what comes of that? Is it callous
Speaker 1: of me that I'm just imagining? When when Yepps died,
Speaker 1: he made a sound and that sound was nieps. I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe that's not even funny. I don't know
Speaker 1: why my brain goes to there um, but but it's
Speaker 1: still It is important to note that they did work
Speaker 1: together for for several years there, so it wasn't just like,
Speaker 1: you know, he met and met this guy and then
Speaker 1: he died and then the new guy took off with
Speaker 1: it like they they were working together on this, but
Speaker 1: they they didn't find a solution during NIPS life. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's let's discuss the gere a little bit. So
Speaker 1: his his name was Louise Jacques Monde de Gear and
Speaker 1: he was born in sevent seven, and he was he
Speaker 1: was primarily you could say, an artist of various kinds.
Speaker 1: He was sort of an artist entrepreneur. He was a painter.
Speaker 1: What else did he do? Oh, he was a printmaker
Speaker 1: and prior to the all this photography jazz, his biggest
Speaker 1: success came through the medium of diorama. Now, this is
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. This is gonna be a little bit
Speaker 1: different than what you probably think of when you think diorama,
Speaker 1: because what I think of is I think of going
Speaker 1: to a museum and seeing a lot of cool dioramas
Speaker 1: or increasingly working on elementary school dioramas with my son.
Speaker 1: You know, it's gluesome dinosaurs in there. Let's let's get
Speaker 1: some some cardboard plants in the back of that shoebox.
Speaker 1: And uh, let's let's get an a on this puppy.
Speaker 1: It's always a shoebox. You cut one wall out or
Speaker 1: you just turn it on its side, I guess, and
Speaker 1: remove the lid. I was doing it all wrong anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you put some action figures in there, you
Speaker 1: do some coloring, but no, this is a little bit different,
Speaker 1: though it's a similar kind of concept. It is creating
Speaker 1: a static image or scene that is a spectacle that
Speaker 1: simulates realism and draws attention. So the diorama, which will
Speaker 1: explain in a minute, began around eighteen twenty one, but
Speaker 1: before this to gear training as an artist and a painter,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that Degare worked on was
Speaker 1: the panorama, which was a type of public spectacle in
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, I think, going back to good
Speaker 1: Bit before then, involving three hundred and sixty degree paintings
Speaker 1: inside an enclosed space, so there'd be like a cylinder
Speaker 1: shaped room you go and sit inside, and then you
Speaker 1: could simulate a whole environment by viewing this three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty degree painting from the inside with attempts to
Speaker 1: capture as much realism as possible, like they would even
Speaker 1: they had all these methods for recreating perspective accurately, And
Speaker 1: so you could be in Paris maybe, but go inside
Speaker 1: a room that looked like the city of Edinburgh and
Speaker 1: and you know, look around and it would be like
Speaker 1: being there. For any of our Atlanta based listeners, it's
Speaker 1: been to Atlanta. I know where you're going with this.
Speaker 1: You're probably thinking of Cyclorama, which is not about motorcycles.
Speaker 1: It sounds potentially sounds more exciting than it is was uh,
Speaker 1: And I say that because I'm not really sure about
Speaker 1: its current status. It was located in its own building
Speaker 1: next to Zoo Atlanta, and it is either in the
Speaker 1: process of being moved or has moved to a new location. Uh.
Speaker 1: So whenever you listen to this episode, look it up
Speaker 1: and uh and see if you can find out where
Speaker 1: it is. But the the idea of Cyclorama was that
Speaker 1: it was uh if you visited it, you know, on
Speaker 1: a school trip or what have you. It was this
Speaker 1: Civil war painting that was uh, that was you that
Speaker 1: went all the way around the walls of this circular room.
Speaker 1: And they also had some like three D elements coming
Speaker 1: out in front of it to sort of give it
Speaker 1: this sense of depth. And then you would also be
Speaker 1: seated in this uh, this kind of stadium seating that
Speaker 1: would uh, that would revolve so that you could see
Speaker 1: all of the painting while music played and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so try to simulate being in a place, right it
Speaker 1: was it was going for realism and way and this
Speaker 1: is pretty much the same principle as the kind of
Speaker 1: panoramas that the Gear worked on as a painter. But
Speaker 1: in the early eighteen twenties, Digere went into this new
Speaker 1: type of project as a as an artist and a
Speaker 1: proprietor um that was known as the diorama. And the
Speaker 1: diorama was not exactly like the panorama. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: you know, circular thing that that went all around you,
Speaker 1: but it was a painted image spectacle that people looked at.
Speaker 1: And what they were really trying to do was to
Speaker 1: create a startling level of realism in large scale painting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what in a way he was really trying to
Speaker 1: push beyond the medium to say like, okay, what could
Speaker 1: I do beyond just presenting a painting of, say a landscape,
Speaker 1: what could we do to say, simulate weather? Could we
Speaker 1: change the lighting on it? Um? And then ultimately you know,
Speaker 1: this involved the presentation of two sided works of art
Speaker 1: with dramatic lighting to change you know, what you were seeing. Um.
Speaker 1: You know it's it's it's difficult even looking at images
Speaker 1: and even videos of this. It's it's often uh problematic
Speaker 1: to try and imagine exactly what it what it consisted of.
Speaker 1: But um, I imagine is having similarities to the older
Speaker 1: traditions of shadow puppetry, which of course depended on on
Speaker 1: performing something with a screen uh, and also certain dramatic
Speaker 1: scroll presentation performance art form. So you find in various
Speaker 1: cultures where you are you are taking a two D
Speaker 1: image and you are displaying it dramatically. But the key
Speaker 1: here in the diorama was the change changing the lighting
Speaker 1: to bring to life one of the two versions of
Speaker 1: the art, such as say a dormant volcano on one
Speaker 1: side of the image and an interrupting one on the other,
Speaker 1: or some or simply casting painted storm clouds with lightning
Speaker 1: to give them the sense of give the to give
Speaker 1: the sense that it's alive with actual storm activity. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that kind of thing. And so uh. In the
Speaker 1: last episode I mentioned this book I've been reading called
Speaker 1: Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport, about
Speaker 1: the invention of photography, and it quotes some contemporaneous sources
Speaker 1: describing the diorama that I that I thought were kind
Speaker 1: of helpful in establishing how powerful this medium was to people.
Speaker 1: So there was a critic of the Paris Monthly Review
Speaker 1: who was writing about one of Daguerre's early dioramas, which
Speaker 1: was a painting that was supposed to represent the inside
Speaker 1: of Canterbury Cathedral. Okay, so the critic writes this, anyone
Speaker 1: who views the interior of Canterbury Cathedral from the gallery
Speaker 1: of the diorama can with difficulty persuade himself that he
Speaker 1: is not looking up it's almost interminable aisle from the
Speaker 1: actual organ loft. And again, when the scene has changed
Speaker 1: and we gaze upon the valley of Sarnan, we are
Speaker 1: electrified by our representation, so miraculous in execution, we mark
Speaker 1: so plainly before us the mountains, lake and buildings which
Speaker 1: some of us have seen before while leaning from our
Speaker 1: rustic balconies, that the mind loses itself in a vision
Speaker 1: of wonder and delight. Uh. And then also they write
Speaker 1: in their book that the Dean of Canterbury, So who
Speaker 1: you know, from the actual cathedral came uh they say,
Speaker 1: quote came specifically to view the diorama of his cathedral,
Speaker 1: and quote could scarcely believe at the sight of the
Speaker 1: cathedral that he was not in his own chapel. There
Speaker 1: are reports of people so convinced by the realism of
Speaker 1: these scenes depicted in the dioramas, like the cathedral, that
Speaker 1: they would approach the proscenium inside the theater and try
Speaker 1: to walk into the scenes like thinking they were real,
Speaker 1: which reminds me of those stories of people getting freaked
Speaker 1: out in in early movies when somebody would say point
Speaker 1: a gun at the camera. There would be a train
Speaker 1: rushing toward the camera. But yeah, So the fascinated and
Speaker 1: enthralled reactions to the dioramas seemed to say something interesting
Speaker 1: about the demand for visual all media and realism in
Speaker 1: visual media, Like I'm trying to imagine how people coming
Speaker 1: in off the streets to pay essentially to go to
Speaker 1: a movie, but not a movie, just one huge painting
Speaker 1: with dynamic lighting effects to simulate stuff like lightning or
Speaker 1: sunshine or running water. Would you know, would just be
Speaker 1: so enraptured by this? I mean, I guess we go
Speaker 1: into museums to look at art usually you have an
Speaker 1: idea that this is some kind of edifying experience that
Speaker 1: you know, you learned something about history, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: look at a lot of different artworks. I'm very interested
Speaker 1: in the idea that people would go in to pay
Speaker 1: to sit in the theater and just like look at
Speaker 1: one gigantic painting, or I think they might change them
Speaker 1: out so you might look at two in in one
Speaker 1: sitting or something, uh, with these lighting effects and and
Speaker 1: sometimes I think they had sound effects to and you'd
Speaker 1: be like, this is this is great afternoon? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can. On one hand, I think back
Speaker 1: to visiting the Cyclorama, and the Cyclorama is a lot
Speaker 1: more interesting than than it may have sounded. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a cool history to it and all, uh,
Speaker 1: you know where the painting came from, what kind of
Speaker 1: you know, the varying conditions it was in over the
Speaker 1: course of its history. But still it's it's not as
Speaker 1: exciting as a movie, right. Uh So, on one hand,
Speaker 1: I want to bring that experience into trying to imagine this.
Speaker 1: But then also I think to some of the more
Speaker 1: engaging large works of art that I've appreciated over the years.
Speaker 1: Uh be it like an Irving Norman, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: a large scale triptych or another example would be, uh,
Speaker 1: I forget the the year of its creation, but the
Speaker 1: huge medicine Buddha that is displayed at the met in
Speaker 1: New York City. Uh. Like those are both large scale
Speaker 1: pieces that you can just spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: looking at, looking at the details, walking around, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of adjusting the lighting insofar as you can do
Speaker 1: that by moving your perspective. So with based on those experiences, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine how the dioramic experience could have taken hold,
Speaker 1: especially in this time before these other visual medium mediums
Speaker 1: were really available. Yeah. I think that's right. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned adjusting the lighting just by moving around to look
Speaker 1: at it from different angles. That One thing that I
Speaker 1: think is very interesting about this is that apparently a
Speaker 1: skilled to Gear specifically brought to this project was his
Speaker 1: skill with lighting and I remember this is before electric
Speaker 1: spotlights and stuff, so it's it's written that do Gear
Speaker 1: had to basically use sunlight, like you would have the
Speaker 1: mechanical operation of windows and shutters and skylights to direct
Speaker 1: light onto the image in certain ways. And sometimes they
Speaker 1: did employ sound effects too, so it wasn't just that.
Speaker 1: But like, it's amazing trying to think what would you
Speaker 1: do if you were trying to like light a play
Speaker 1: but you had to use sunlight? Yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: also brings it on and just what goes into displaying
Speaker 1: art in a museum, you know, just all the lighting
Speaker 1: and a placement, uh, considerations that have to be in
Speaker 1: effect just to be able to not even think about
Speaker 1: the physical location, to be able to focus on the
Speaker 1: art itself. Yeah. So do Garre find success with the diorama?
Speaker 1: This does eventually prove to be a successful money making operation,
Speaker 1: and uh, but Gear is not satisfied. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: to stop there. He remains interested in this thing of
Speaker 1: increasing realism in art, and so you can pretty easily
Speaker 1: see how this might set someone on the road toward
Speaker 1: developing photography. Yeah, I mean his interest lined up perfectly
Speaker 1: again kind of in hindsight, but he was a painter.
Speaker 1: He was a camera obscurity enthusiast, an inventor, and someone
Speaker 1: who was eager to experiment with new technologies. Right. He
Speaker 1: was on this hunt for ever increasing realism in art.
Speaker 1: He was sort of obsessed with capturing realism in images,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have the tools to get as much
Speaker 1: realism as he wanted, and he became interested in discovering
Speaker 1: what those tools might be, even though he didn't really
Speaker 1: have any scientific training. Like the Gere was not a scientist.
Speaker 1: He was an artist. And this brings another thing to
Speaker 1: mine and perhaps you can comment on this from from
Speaker 1: the book you were reading, But it also seems that
Speaker 1: the Gear had either personal charisma or just very good
Speaker 1: social networking skills because his his biography, you know, you
Speaker 1: can pinpoint all the various important connections he's making, be
Speaker 1: it with uh, you know, like a key inventor like
Speaker 1: like Nips, or various important and influential members of the
Speaker 1: of the French academies. Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean
Speaker 1: we I don't think we were really going to get
Speaker 1: into this in the episode, but like his friendship with
Speaker 1: Charles Chevalier ended up proving very important and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he seemed to make friends well like people liked him.
Speaker 1: He was charismatic. He was he was a remarkable person.
Speaker 1: He did not seem to have just a rogues list
Speaker 1: of enemies that he made impair, not like Adolph Sachs,
Speaker 1: the inventor of the saxophone, who instantly got into trouble.
Speaker 1: But no, yeah, you're exactly right in the point you
Speaker 1: make there. Yeah, like de Gare had strengths he was
Speaker 1: bringing to this invention process that we're not necessarily in
Speaker 1: strengths in say empirical research or the sciences. They were
Speaker 1: all kinds of other strengths. They were strengths with knowledge
Speaker 1: of the arts, with hands on experience and how people
Speaker 1: re ate relate to media and imagery and in the
Speaker 1: arts and in the dioramas and the panoramas. It was
Speaker 1: networking and social skills. He had a lot of this
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, I mean, in a way, I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of Jim Hinson, you know, when you when you look
Speaker 1: at the at the skills he brought to the table,
Speaker 1: like you know, not only was he it was the artistic,
Speaker 1: but he was also who you know, seemed to have
Speaker 1: have you know, a lot of personal charisma, was great
Speaker 1: at working with people, had a good business mindset. So
Speaker 1: you had all of these skills helping to to to
Speaker 1: leverage what they could achieve in life. Yeah, And so Gara,
Speaker 1: of course, was also familiar with optical aids in art,
Speaker 1: like the camera obscure. I think you mentioned that, And
Speaker 1: like others before him, he became sort of obsessed with
Speaker 1: trying to fix the images they were projected in a
Speaker 1: camera obscura by some chemical means. And in their book,
Speaker 1: Watson and Rappaport make an interesting argument. They say the
Speaker 1: following quote, had he known more of the complexities of chemistry,
Speaker 1: he might have been daunted. Instead, it was precisely his
Speaker 1: scientific naivete that allowed him to tackle the challenges that
Speaker 1: lay lay ahead, unaware of the mind field of potential
Speaker 1: failure that lay before him. Now. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they're right about that, but that's a very interesting read
Speaker 1: on the story, that it's essentially the fact that he
Speaker 1: doesn't know what he's doing that that gives him the
Speaker 1: energy to do it. Like no one had probably convinced
Speaker 1: him that this was an astounding task he was that
Speaker 1: he was setting out to conquer. Yeah, like nobody had.
Speaker 1: He was not convinced that he could not do it right. Again.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's right, but it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. Uh and so do Gare
Speaker 1: seems to have begun experimenting with with attempts to invent
Speaker 1: photography around eighteen twenty four, so a few years after
Speaker 1: his first success with the diorama and his work. Habits
Speaker 1: were reportedly devoted bordering on manic like. His friends said
Speaker 1: that he would stay in his laboratory studio for days
Speaker 1: at a time, that he would miss meals. Sometimes he'd
Speaker 1: work without sleeping. His wife became very concerned about him.
Speaker 1: There's one story that we only have for many years
Speaker 1: after the fact, so it's somewhat questionable whether it's true.
Speaker 1: But this comes from a French chemist named Jean Baptiste
Speaker 1: Andre Duma, and Watson and Rappaport relay this story in
Speaker 1: their book. They say that one day in eighteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: Duma reports that after he had been giving a lecture
Speaker 1: at the Sorbonne in Paris, um he was approached by
Speaker 1: a woman and h here's how it goes. Quote a
Speaker 1: woman who seemed to be in a very worried state
Speaker 1: of mind. Monsieur Dumas, She said, I have to ask
Speaker 1: you a question of vital importance to myself. I am
Speaker 1: the wife of Dagere, the painter. He has for some
Speaker 1: time been possessed by the idea that he can fix
Speaker 1: the images of a camera. He is always at the thought.
Speaker 1: He cannot sleep at night for it. I am afraid
Speaker 1: he is out of his mind. Do you, as a
Speaker 1: man of science, think it can be done? Or is
Speaker 1: he mad? In the present state of our knowledge, replied
Speaker 1: Duma it cannot be done, but I cannot say it
Speaker 1: will always remain impossible, nor set them in down as
Speaker 1: mad who seeks to do it, which I'm sure to
Speaker 1: her was like the worst possible kind of answer, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like, so she couldn't be told like, yes,
Speaker 1: you need to make him stop, but also couldn't be
Speaker 1: told that, yeah, I think he could do that. It's
Speaker 1: like it's probably impossible, but he should keep trying. But
Speaker 1: it kind of plays into this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: the non scientists just plow owing obliviously into the cutting
Speaker 1: edge of chemistry. There's something extremely charming and attractive about that.
Speaker 1: I agree, I mean, especially again with hindsight knowing that
Speaker 1: he he eventually succeeds. Yeah, I guess most people who
Speaker 1: tried to do this probably would not succeed. But to Gare,
Speaker 1: I mean, he seemed he was dedicated to his work,
Speaker 1: even if he wasn't scientifically trained. He was clearly very clever.
Speaker 1: You know, he picked up on things. He was good,
Speaker 1: you know, working, working, solving problems with his hands. And
Speaker 1: Sodge's efforts failed for years until through a mutual friend,
Speaker 1: he came into contact with the man we were talking
Speaker 1: about in the last episode and who we've mentioned several
Speaker 1: times now shows f Nissa Fogniepps, the scientist who had
Speaker 1: invented the crude bitumen based method of heliography in the
Speaker 1: in the eighteen twenties. And I think here we can
Speaker 1: sort of mark a turning point for Togere. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he's he's made a connection with someone with expertise
Speaker 1: in the matter, and he can he can combine that
Speaker 1: with his own experimentation and uh, you know, they the
Speaker 1: two only worked together again for like four years before
Speaker 1: Nives passed away. It was the eighteen thirty three, and
Speaker 1: they were unable to come up with with anything that
Speaker 1: really worked that really solved the problem. But it's sort
Speaker 1: of I think this set to gear on on a
Speaker 1: productive road so to get continued work here on this uh.
Speaker 1: And apparently by by eighteen thirty eight he had a
Speaker 1: process worked out that was pretty solid, and by eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine he was actually ready to share it around
Speaker 1: to show it to people potential investors made right um,
Speaker 1: and he showed it to various French luminaries and finally
Speaker 1: to the French Academies of Science and Art. Yes. And
Speaker 1: this process of taking a photograph that he revealed in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine, this is what became known as the
Speaker 1: Guero type. Right. And again, like all these other photographic
Speaker 1: processes we've been talking about, it sounds like nothing short
Speaker 1: of an alchemical act of wonder. Here's how it's described
Speaker 1: by Malcolm Daniel from the Department of Photographs at the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Museum of Art. YEA, he's got several good essays
Speaker 1: that you can easily find on about the history of photography. Quote,
Speaker 1: the process revealed on that day seemed magical. Each Degara
Speaker 1: type is a remarkably detailed, one of a kind photographic
Speaker 1: image on a highly polished silver plated sheet of copper
Speaker 1: sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a large box camera,
Speaker 1: developed in mercury fumes, and stabilized or fixed with salt
Speaker 1: water or hypo sodium theo sulfa. Right, So, so do
Speaker 1: get picked up on the work that others had done
Speaker 1: with silver based compounds. Remember from the last episode, Uh,
Speaker 1: Tom Wedgewood's shadow grams or photograms were made by painting
Speaker 1: a surface with silver nitrate before exposure, uh. And then
Speaker 1: the areas that were exposed to light would darken, but
Speaker 1: eventually the whole thing, of course, in Wedgewood's photo photograms
Speaker 1: would darken all over when they were exposed to more
Speaker 1: bright light. So could they couldn't fix the image, It
Speaker 1: wouldn't stay there without continuing to expose and degrade. And
Speaker 1: to Gara's method solved that problem. So to explain a
Speaker 1: little more fully, so his method involved, at first, you
Speaker 1: would create a light sensitive silver compound. By you'd start
Speaker 1: with a plate like a copper plate that had a
Speaker 1: silver treatment of silver coating on one side, and this
Speaker 1: would be the surface on which the image was projected. Okay,
Speaker 1: on the silver surface. Then you take the silver coated
Speaker 1: surface and you would expose it to iodine vapors, and
Speaker 1: these iodine vapors would react with the silver to produce
Speaker 1: silver iodide. A silver iodide is also highly photosensitive, and
Speaker 1: bits of it that are exposed to light quickly darkened
Speaker 1: as they break down into particles of metallic silver. Uh So,
Speaker 1: once the plate was made sensitive to light by turning
Speaker 1: its surface to this to contain the silver iodide, of course,
Speaker 1: during this whole process and needs to be kept dark, right,
Speaker 1: it would then be exposed to light on the back
Speaker 1: wall of a camera or obscura right, So you'd use
Speaker 1: the camera obscure process, but instead of just projecting on
Speaker 1: the wall, you'd project on this plate that that was
Speaker 1: now covered in silver iodide. And then of course the
Speaker 1: silver iodide would react with the light in proportion to
Speaker 1: how much light there was on every little bit of
Speaker 1: the surface, which would make a copy of the image. Now, Originally,
Speaker 1: there was still a problem here in that, like Nieps's process,
Speaker 1: this really required extremely long exposure times, which is not
Speaker 1: practical if you want to capture anything that's moving or
Speaker 1: living or you know, or dynamic in any way. But
Speaker 1: Doge got around this by employing the concept of chemically
Speaker 1: quote developing the photograph kind of like you would do
Speaker 1: when you develop photos today, when you go into a
Speaker 1: dark room, right, you put a photo into the developing liquid,
Speaker 1: and originally there's something on it that's invisible to you.
Speaker 1: You can't even see it, but the developing liquid brings
Speaker 1: out the image. And this meant a brief exposure to
Speaker 1: a light based image, maybe just a few minutes, could
Speaker 1: be developed by exposing the plate to mercury fumes, making
Speaker 1: the reaction more dramatic and bringing out the contrast in
Speaker 1: the image between the light and dark areas on the plate.
Speaker 1: And then finally, the process would fix the image so
Speaker 1: that further exposure to light wouldn't darken any more of
Speaker 1: the silver iodide. Uh. And the way they did that
Speaker 1: is they would wash the plate off with hot salt water,
Speaker 1: which would remove whatever silver iodide remained and then give
Speaker 1: you a stable, fixed image on your reflective silver plate.
Speaker 1: So to get revealed them the methods. But he retained
Speaker 1: a patent on the equipment and he received a lifetime
Speaker 1: pension in exchange from the academies. Yeah, which that's a
Speaker 1: clever move. So you give him a pension so he
Speaker 1: doesn't need to keep making money off of like enforcing
Speaker 1: a license on the process, right, so other people can
Speaker 1: use the Jaguero type process. And this process would reign
Speaker 1: supreme for like twenty years because he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can use it. Yeah. Uh. So another great thing
Speaker 1: about history photography is that, as with last episode, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the images, the key important historical images are
Speaker 1: still available today and we can look at them. We
Speaker 1: can they take us back to the earliest days of
Speaker 1: a photographic record, in the earliest days of the of
Speaker 1: the development of this technology. The earliest I think reliably
Speaker 1: dated Daguara type comes from eighteen thirty seven. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's like a lot of these these images
Speaker 1: that he tested has like some plaster casts and it's
Speaker 1: still life. Uh. And he he'd like to use plaster
Speaker 1: casts apparently because they were they were very reflective because
Speaker 1: they're white and they don't move. That being key because
Speaker 1: you're talking in an exposure time of like ten to
Speaker 1: twelve minutes. Here and in eighteen thirty eight he made
Speaker 1: the first reliably dated photograph of a human being. And
Speaker 1: this this is a famous image and this image is
Speaker 1: probably gonna be the lead image for this episode. On
Speaker 1: our landing page at invention pod dot com. It was
Speaker 1: an eight a m photograph of the busy boulevard Do Tempel.
Speaker 1: It sounds French enough, I guess. I mean I'm not
Speaker 1: French either, Do Tempel do Temple spelling Temple. So it's
Speaker 1: a it's a city street escape. But then if you
Speaker 1: look to the like lower left hand corner, you can
Speaker 1: clearly see a shoeshiner and their customer. They're visible and
Speaker 1: uh and and these are the first two human beings photographed.
Speaker 1: And it is it's haunting because you look at them
Speaker 1: and it's almost like they're the first humans right, like
Speaker 1: you're gazing back in time to see Adam and Eve,
Speaker 1: except instead of Adam and Eve, it's a it's just
Speaker 1: this guy getting in his shoe shine. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: so there are several things that make the image fascinating
Speaker 1: and haunting. One is that, uh, they're the only two
Speaker 1: this this big scene of a street. You know, it
Speaker 1: seems like you should be able to see lots of
Speaker 1: people and maybe there are more hidden somewhere in the background,
Speaker 1: but since they're closer to the camera, it seems like
Speaker 1: they're the only two people in the image. On this
Speaker 1: otherwise deserted street, which is a little creepy to begin with, right,
Speaker 1: because it looks like what twenty eight days later or
Speaker 1: something exactly, But this was eights playing in the background.
Speaker 1: But this was eight am on a busy of French Street.
Speaker 1: So in actuality there are people moving all over the place,
Speaker 1: but since the exposure time was so long, these were
Speaker 1: apparently the only two individuals who were not moving and
Speaker 1: therefore the only ones we see. There's all this like
Speaker 1: invisible motion, invisible activity that's just lost to us. And
Speaker 1: so when you think about that, the image is even crazier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's some other figures. It's hard to pick
Speaker 1: out exactly what. There are some other figures that could
Speaker 1: be humans in here, I'm not positive. But another thing
Speaker 1: about them is that they're um like the buildings are
Speaker 1: sharper in the image than the people are. The people
Speaker 1: are kind of like phantoms. They're like shadow people in
Speaker 1: the image, probably because they were moving a little bit
Speaker 1: it right. Anyways, it's a remarkable image. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: it before, but if you haven't, check it out, Like
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going to make sure that it's on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode at invention pot dot com.
Speaker 1: I mean all of the earliest photos make me feel
Speaker 1: a little creepy. Oh yeah, I mean you're gazing back
Speaker 1: in time, right, Yeah, I mean, I guess you always
Speaker 1: are when you look at a photo, but especially in
Speaker 1: this case, because you're you're getting closer to that. It's
Speaker 1: almost like reaching the ends of the earth, right, the
Speaker 1: ends of the photographic record. And granted people look like
Speaker 1: people before that as well, in the same way that
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of strange when you're like, oh, the
Speaker 1: first color pictures, you know, as if the world was
Speaker 1: black and white before these images came and came around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard for us who are used to
Speaker 1: photography to appreciate how bizarre and mystical and earth shaking
Speaker 1: this technology was. I I found an article that Edgar
Speaker 1: Allan Poe wrote about this invention. He wrote about the
Speaker 1: Jaguaro type in eighteen forty in a Philadelphia publication called
Speaker 1: alex Unders Weekly Messenger. Did you come across this, Rob?
Speaker 1: I did not, but I'm not surprised because Poe, as
Speaker 1: we recently discussed on stuff to bow your mind, you know,
Speaker 1: not only a writer of of these maccab tales, but
Speaker 1: also wrote about science. Yeah, number one, he says, quote
Speaker 1: the instrument itself must undoubtedly be regarded as the most
Speaker 1: important and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science.
Speaker 1: So he's already going all in um. But then he
Speaker 1: goes into more depth about why this is quote. All
Speaker 1: language must fall short of conveying any just idea of
Speaker 1: the truth. And this will not appear so wonderful when
Speaker 1: we reflect that the source of vision itself has been,
Speaker 1: in this instance the designer. Perhaps, if we imagine the
Speaker 1: distinctness with which an image is reflected in a positively
Speaker 1: perfect mirror, we come as near the reality as by
Speaker 1: any other means. For in truth, the Daguero typed plate
Speaker 1: is infinitely we use the term advisedly, is infinitely more
Speaker 1: accurate in its representation than any painting by human hands.
Speaker 1: If we examine a work of ordinary art by means
Speaker 1: of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature
Speaker 1: will disappear. But the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing
Speaker 1: discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity
Speaker 1: of aspect with the thing represented. The variations of shade
Speaker 1: and the gradations of both linear and aerial perspective are
Speaker 1: those of truth itself in the suprem nous of its perfection.
Speaker 1: So to come back to da Gear, you know, his
Speaker 1: again his background was was heavily artistic, but he also
Speaker 1: realized the scientific possibilities, you know, in part I imagine
Speaker 1: by talking to various French luminaries who had interest in
Speaker 1: the sciences. But he ended up wowing people with photos
Speaker 1: not only of you know, bits of sculpture and in
Speaker 1: the street scenes, but also photos of fossils. A dead
Speaker 1: spider really excited some folks, as did a Deguara type
Speaker 1: of the moon. That's right, and that that combination of
Speaker 1: interests in the arts and the sciences came together I
Speaker 1: think when it was first presented, Because the official debut
Speaker 1: of the Daguero type process was in eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: One of the events here was on August nineteen, eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, when Degara gave an explanation of the process
Speaker 1: before a joint session of the French Academy of Sciences
Speaker 1: and the Academy of Fine Arts UM. But of course
Speaker 1: we should point out that the deguerotype does have limitations.
Speaker 1: Even though the images are in many ways still quite
Speaker 1: striking today. One of the limitations is that, um, it's
Speaker 1: not making a negative, it's making a positive image on
Speaker 1: a highly reflective silver surface, which meant that the image
Speaker 1: could only be viewed from certain angles and ideally like
Speaker 1: needed to be viewed when reflecting a dark surface in
Speaker 1: front of it. If you were to make a daguerotype
Speaker 1: reflect a light surface, the deguerotype kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a negative of itself. Another problem, of course, is that you're,
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with metal plates, right, which are ultimately
Speaker 1: not going to be as uh convenient for people as say,
Speaker 1: like printing on some kind of paper. Yeah. Each dagarattype,
Speaker 1: it's important to note, is a one of a kind production.
Speaker 1: So when when if you were to go to get
Speaker 1: a deguarat type taken of something, and there wasn't a
Speaker 1: question of how many copies you would need and and
Speaker 1: do you want a wallet size with that, you could
Speaker 1: make a copy of a degaratype, And the way you
Speaker 1: do it is you take it to de guaratype of
Speaker 1: the deguarat type. Well yes, but but but as you's
Speaker 1: gonna imagine, like that was not a tremendously convenient process, right,
Speaker 1: not as convenient as just getting like a photo negative
Speaker 1: that you can that you can copy out multiple times.
Speaker 1: So I have a question I've been wondering about, which is,
Speaker 1: obviously Degar was very interested in the idea of realism
Speaker 1: in art, improving realism in art. He'd done it with
Speaker 1: the pan or ama, the diorama, and then with ultimately
Speaker 1: the Daguera type. Is photography necessarily in line with Daguerre's quest?
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, it seems like the answers
Speaker 1: obviously yes, and I think it probably did fall in
Speaker 1: line with Daguerre's quest. And also when you consider the
Speaker 1: you know, what were the ideal aspects of artistic pursuit
Speaker 1: of the time, which we touched on in the last episode. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But it also does make me ask the question, well,
Speaker 1: what actually is realism? Because we've already discussed the ways
Speaker 1: that any fixed two D representation of the world, however
Speaker 1: automatic and objective, like made by a camera instead of
Speaker 1: by a human hand, is not exactly the same as
Speaker 1: what the physical world really is, which is three D
Speaker 1: and actually for D because it's always changing over time.
Speaker 1: What if the photograph actually helped make art more realistic
Speaker 1: in the sense of a photograph, like more like the
Speaker 1: image of a photograph. Are there types of scenes in
Speaker 1: reality that might be more realist stickley conveyed by less
Speaker 1: objective fixed medium like painting, at least until like motion
Speaker 1: pictures come along. Yeah, I mean it makes me think
Speaker 1: of say impressionism for instance. Um, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: it's certainly you get you get closer to the image,
Speaker 1: you see the it falls apart in the same way
Speaker 1: that that earlier description was talking about, you know how
Speaker 1: from Edgar Allen Poe. But at the same time, when
Speaker 1: you think about how we actually view reality, about how
Speaker 1: our minds process uh this uh the sense data and
Speaker 1: kind of stitched together and form something concrete out of
Speaker 1: things that are at times vaguely perceived, it makes me
Speaker 1: think that, well, when I'm looking at a monet, perhaps
Speaker 1: like that is more in line with how my brain
Speaker 1: is processing reality as opposed to the uh you know,
Speaker 1: the the the objectivity of of a pure photograph. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean, certainly a photograph is going to
Speaker 1: be more object of a realistic in a certain sense
Speaker 1: in that like it's directly sampling the light rays that
Speaker 1: are actually there and would be hitting your eye in
Speaker 1: that instant moment when you were looking at a thing,
Speaker 1: And I guess human painting is never going to capture
Speaker 1: that level of objectivity. But there there are ways in
Speaker 1: which I wonder if, especially in scenes that are moving,
Speaker 1: that that painting suggests things to the mind that are
Speaker 1: more more accurately suggestive of what memories or impressions say
Speaker 1: of a scene are like than a photo is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and again it it is hard to really
Speaker 1: wrapprehend our heads around all of that because I do
Speaker 1: think we are so influenced by photographs and we think
Speaker 1: of our memories as photographs or as motion pictures when
Speaker 1: they're they're really not quite the same at all. Yeah, alright, well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take another break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back we will discuss a rival of Dagar's,
Speaker 1: Henry Fox Talbot. Alright, so we're we're back, and we're
Speaker 1: leaving France, we're entering England, and we're dealing with the
Speaker 1: other major individual, uh from this time period in the
Speaker 1: birth of photography. Right, So, around the same time Degere
Speaker 1: was experimenting with ways to capture the light, and of
Speaker 1: course remember we we didn't mention again, but In one
Speaker 1: of the earlier episodes, we mentioned that Degare wrote this
Speaker 1: letter to a friend of his, you know, when he
Speaker 1: had perfected the process, where he said, I have captured
Speaker 1: the light and arrested its flight. The sun itself shall
Speaker 1: draw my pictures. It seems fitting for the kind of
Speaker 1: guy to Gea was kind of a grandiose artist, right,
Speaker 1: He's he's making Uh he's sort of like I've become
Speaker 1: a god. Um. But anyway, so yeah, Around the same
Speaker 1: time that Degare was doing these experiments, an Englishman named
Speaker 1: Henry Fox Talbot who lived eighteen eighteen seventy seven, had
Speaker 1: independently been working on the invention of photography, and according
Speaker 1: to several people who tell the story, he he was
Speaker 1: sort of inspired by a simple limitation, which is that
Speaker 1: he couldn't really draw. That's gonna hold you back, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So unlike to Gere, who was a natural artist but
Speaker 1: was not really trained as a scientist, Henry Talbot was
Speaker 1: sort of a natural scientist. Like he grew up shy, intelligent, inquisitive.
Speaker 1: He was a boy of the English aristocracy, so he had,
Speaker 1: you know, he had leisure and means to do experiments
Speaker 1: and to be kind of the gentleman scientist of the day, right,
Speaker 1: and so he had leisure and means to do experiments,
Speaker 1: and he was known for doing lots of them. He like,
Speaker 1: he had a reputation for doing chemistry experiments in his
Speaker 1: house that caused explosions, much to the amusement of his mother.
Speaker 1: Uh and I think to the worry of at least
Speaker 1: people who they were trying to get insurance policies from.
Speaker 1: But he grew up with an interest in mathematics and
Speaker 1: the natural sciences, including botany and astronomy as well as chemistry.
Speaker 1: But he was, you know, one of those people. He
Speaker 1: had lots of interests. He was interested in ancient Egypt,
Speaker 1: in the you know, sculpture and the fine arts and
Speaker 1: all that. Uh. He went on to become a graduate
Speaker 1: of Trinity College, Cambridge, and eventually he was a Liberal
Speaker 1: MP in the House of Commons. Now, remember in the
Speaker 1: last episode we had a section where we talked about
Speaker 1: the many things that photography fundamentally changed when it was invented.
Speaker 1: And one thing, of course was realism and art, but
Speaker 1: another thing was accuracy in science. If you have an
Speaker 1: interest in botany like Henry Fox Talbot did, and you
Speaker 1: want to make observations about a species of plant, like
Speaker 1: documenting the vascular structure of the leaves of a plant,
Speaker 1: or describing the gonads of a flowering plant. You today
Speaker 1: can take a picture, but before that, before you could
Speaker 1: take a picture, you needed to be able to draw
Speaker 1: what you were making observations about. And so there's a
Speaker 1: story told in another one of these essays by the
Speaker 1: photo historian Malcolm Daniel about when Henry Fox Talbot was
Speaker 1: on his honeymoon in Italy in eighteen thirty three. He
Speaker 1: was trying to sketch a picture of a lake called
Speaker 1: Lake Como, and uh, he of course did not have
Speaker 1: Daguerre's natural talent for drawing, but he did have the
Speaker 1: aid of an optical device. In this case, it was
Speaker 1: not a camera obscura, though he had used those before,
Speaker 1: but it was a camera lucida, camera lucidam, which is
Speaker 1: Latin for a bright room or a well lit room.
Speaker 1: And this was sort of like I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of a good way to describe it, it's almost
Speaker 1: kind of like an augmented reality device. It was a
Speaker 1: refraction lens that you could position above a piece of
Speaker 1: paper or other surface. That you wanted to draw on,
Speaker 1: and then the lens would capture the image that you
Speaker 1: aimed at at and then refracted about ninety degrees, so
Speaker 1: you could look through the lens down at the paper
Speaker 1: you're drawing on and see a version of the object
Speaker 1: or image in front of you superimposed onto this blank canvas.
Speaker 1: And then of course this could aid you in tracing
Speaker 1: or reproducing. But unfortunately Talbot discovered that even with the
Speaker 1: aid of a camera Lucida, he was unable to reproduce
Speaker 1: images of the natural world accurate, accurately in a way
Speaker 1: that satisfied him. And just as a side note, this
Speaker 1: is funny. I'm picturing this image of him on his
Speaker 1: honeymoon and he's got a camera Lucida and he's trying
Speaker 1: to draw, and it reminds me of like Dover Beach
Speaker 1: by Matthew Arnold, you know, another like nineteenth century englishman
Speaker 1: being insufferable and self serious on his honeymoon. These are
Speaker 1: the very guys that would just be on their their
Speaker 1: phone the whole time if such a technology hadn't had
Speaker 1: existed during their hunt. Right, yeah, what are you doing, honey?
Speaker 1: Ignorant armies are clashing by night so Talbot was trying
Speaker 1: to use technology to make up for his um is
Speaker 1: lacking artistic skill. Yeah, and he was unsatisfied with what
Speaker 1: he could do, even with the aid of a camera
Speaker 1: lucida or a camera obscura. But he wondered would it
Speaker 1: be possible to capture the kind of image projected in
Speaker 1: a camera obscura? And he he wrote, quote, how charming
Speaker 1: it would be if it were possible to cause these
Speaker 1: natural images to imprint themselves durably remain fixed upon the paper.
Speaker 1: So he's got the bug to write the photography inspiration
Speaker 1: germ has implanted itself in young Henry Fox Talbot's brain.
Speaker 1: And this was around eighteen thirty three, eighteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: so this was before Dagare had developed and refined his
Speaker 1: process in France, and Talbot set about conducting experiments to
Speaker 1: discover a method of capturing the image, originally working off
Speaker 1: the same types of chemicals we've talked about several times already,
Speaker 1: photosensitive silver compounds like silver nitrate, silver chloride, and eventually
Speaker 1: silver iodide like Deger's method uses. Now remember Gear was
Speaker 1: using metal plates like copper plates treated with a silver coating.
Speaker 1: That would be the reactive surface, but Talbot was going for,
Speaker 1: I guess, a less durable method, so he was exposing
Speaker 1: the image on treated paper. So while de Garat types
Speaker 1: produced superior quality images, again each one was one of
Speaker 1: a kind. Abot's method, though, could produce an unlimited number
Speaker 1: of prints from a single negative. Yeah, So unlike the
Speaker 1: Digerat type method, which produced a positive image, the Talbot
Speaker 1: method was would produce a photo negative like we're used
Speaker 1: to seeing come out of a camera today, and this
Speaker 1: would be on a like a piece of paper treated
Speaker 1: with some kind of silver based solution. Unfortunately for Talbot,
Speaker 1: he worked on most of this privately for years, and
Speaker 1: even though he had already discovered a lot of the
Speaker 1: principles of photography in the mid eighteen thirties, did Gear
Speaker 1: beat him to announcing and publicly demonstrating the process. And
Speaker 1: Doge's photos just looked better because of differences in materials
Speaker 1: and methods. They were more durable and more impressive to
Speaker 1: look at generally than Talbot's. And again, house it just
Speaker 1: had a greater level of detail. That's right now. One
Speaker 1: of Talbot's important contributions to the process of photography was
Speaker 1: actually suggested to him by his friend John Herschel, who
Speaker 1: was the son of the astronomer William Herschel who discovered
Speaker 1: planet Uranus uh now John Herschel. And remember that sorry
Speaker 1: the Dagara type method, it used hot salt water originally
Speaker 1: or earlier on to fix the image on the plate
Speaker 1: by washing off any remaining sodium iodide, and this would
Speaker 1: stop the image from continuing to react when exposed to light.
Speaker 1: Over time, it would fix the image so it stayed
Speaker 1: like it was. And this fixing method was only sort of,
Speaker 1: only partially effective. Herschel suggested instead of just washing with
Speaker 1: hot saltwater, using hypo sulfite of soda instead, which was
Speaker 1: a much more useful fixer than regular salt. So that's
Speaker 1: an important chemical insight. But in the early years, unfortunately
Speaker 1: for Talbot, his process was not anywhere near as close
Speaker 1: to to a success as to gears. It was the
Speaker 1: age of the Dagara type after this, and I guess
Speaker 1: we'll explore more about the age of the Dagara type
Speaker 1: in the next episode. But digs process was just much
Speaker 1: more popular for several reasons. Number one, I think because
Speaker 1: digars images were more durable and they were clear, you know,
Speaker 1: they were sharp and clear and they looked really good, whereas, uh,
Speaker 1: whereas Talbot's images were more kind of like hazy and ephemeral.
Speaker 1: And also Talbot tried to patent the process and make
Speaker 1: money off of it, whereas to get you know, I
Speaker 1: think to Garrett, he patented his equipment. Equipment was patented,
Speaker 1: but not but not the process, so anybody could go
Speaker 1: out and do it exactly. But this brings this episode
Speaker 1: brings us really to to the birth of photography, the
Speaker 1: Guero type age. Yeah. Um. And in the next episode
Speaker 1: of the show, we're going to continue with photography, and
Speaker 1: I think the next episodes really kind of be kind
Speaker 1: of a bridge between photography and the in the moving image,
Speaker 1: in the motion picture, because that's also part of our
Speaker 1: our ongoing trajectory on the show. But in the next
Speaker 1: episode we'll get into into some of the advancements that
Speaker 1: also took the the photograph out of the hands of
Speaker 1: the elite and made it more of of of a
Speaker 1: technology that could be utilized by more or less everyday people,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into just continually discussed just how it
Speaker 1: changed the world and how difficult it is for us
Speaker 1: to really really grasp the idea of a pre photographic
Speaker 1: world exactly. I'm excited for next time. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out more episodes of Invention,
Speaker 1: if you want to see that that image that I
Speaker 1: was discussing earlier, and maybe I'll throw a secondary image
Speaker 1: on there as well, you can find the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode at invention pod dot com. Um Also,
Speaker 1: if you want to support the show, which of course
Speaker 1: we encourage you to do, the best thing you can
Speaker 1: do is make sure that you rate and review us
Speaker 1: wherever you have the power to do so, and make
Speaker 1: sure you have subscribed to Invention. Huge thanks to our
Speaker 1: buddy Scott Benjamin for research assistance and to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Torri Harrison. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can contact us at our email address,
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