WEBVTT - Invention Playlist: The Camera, Part 1 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.520 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, everybody, 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:12.400 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:17.640 Joe McCormick, and we're back to discuss more optical recording technology. 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:22.040 Last time we talked about the camera obscura, right, Yeah, 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:27.000 and a necessary precursor to true photographic technology. Yeah. So, 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:29.840 from like the writings of Master Mo in ancient China 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.760 to the experiments of Roger Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci, 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.760 the camera obscura has been this fascinating way that people 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.760 discovered to take an image of the ever changing three 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.120 D world outside and project it onto a two D 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.360 surface inside a box, either just through a pinhole or 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.680 focused with the lens or with a mirror. Yeah, essentially 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:56.840 externalizing sight to a certain extent, like taking uh, something 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.560 of what it is to see the world and uh 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:01.960 and car having it away from reality, projecting it on 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.280 the wall and uh and allowing us to see it 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:07.480 there instead. Yeah. Well, it's it's making site a new 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:11.160 kind of thing. I mean, otherwise, site is seeing the 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:13.880 three D world and putting an image of the world 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.240 on a wall that does sort of suggest to you 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:19.840 a new way that things could be like the idea, 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:23.040 like a real image of the real world being just 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:25.880 like a painting, something that you could, you know, move 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.920 around and make copies of. And so the camera obscura 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:34.680 did not constitute photography. It's sort of half of the story, right, 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:38.200 because photography has to do two things. Number one, it 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:40.959 has to focus an image of the world on a 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.800 two D surface. But number two, it has to make 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.240 that image permanent, to fix the image so that it 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.760 stays after the source of the light has gone away, right, 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:54.760 like in a flint Stone's world. I suppose you could 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:58.160 have a camera that consists of a camera obscura, and 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.000 then there's a small of terra sa something inside the 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.360 camera box that then traces everything, and then that would 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.040 be your photograph. But it's how we get that terrasaar 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.680 tracing the upside down vision of a of a park 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:15.240 h That is where we get into the like the 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:19.760 true technology, the true invention of modern photography, exactly right. 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.080 So we we've got the camera obscure, we've got the 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.600 technology to focus an image on a two D surface 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:27.359 using a pinhole or a lens. But the question is 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.239 how to make it permanent, how to fix the image. 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:32.600 The camera obscured does the first half, but how do 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:35.080 we get to the second? And I wanted to go 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:36.960 ahead and mention a book that I'm going to be 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.640 referring to, probably over the next several episodes that we 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:42.560 do on the history of photography. This is a book 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.480 I've been reading and really enjoying called Capturing the Light 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:49.200 The Birth of Photography, A true Story of Genius and Rivalry, 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.440 by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport. Now, this book focuses 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:56.400 on the two main people who are actually credited as 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.720 the inventors of photography in the modern sense, and that 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.040 would be Louis de Guerre and Henry Fox Talbot. We're 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.280 not going to quite get to them today because today 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.320 we wanted to focus on photographic technology that came before them, 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:13.280 what was almost photography but not quite. But actually the 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.520 title of the book comes from a quote that Louis 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:18.720 de Gare the the inventor of the de guara type, 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.200 who will talk about more in the next episode, something 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:24.320 he wrote in a letter to Charles Chevalier in eighteen 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.359 thirty nine when he had made this discovery of how 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.800 to really finally trap the image and what he said. 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.200 This is translated from the French. He said, I have 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:37.320 captured the light and arrested its flight. The sun itself 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:41.040 shall draw my pictures. Oh wow, that's beautiful. It is beautiful. 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.960 It sounds almost kind of grandiose and diabolical. It makes 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:45.480 the hair on the back of my next stand up 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:47.960 a bit. Hey. When we were talking about inventions and 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:50.360 we have to talk about inventors, and you know, sometimes 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:51.920 we can get a little carried away, you know, I 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:55.720 wanted to read a quote from Watson and Rappaport's book 0:03:55.920 --> 0:04:00.200 where they're talking about the the intellectual uh background to 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.960 the era of photography before photography came around, and the 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.640 writing about the influence of Isaac Newton. So they're discussing 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.480 quote Isaac Newton's seminal work on the subject during the 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.840 sixteen seventies, which culminated in the publication in seventeen o 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:18.560 four of his Optics. In it, Newton unknowingly predicted the 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:23.200 science of photochemistry when he remarked that quote, the changing 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:27.839 of bodies into light and light into bodies is very 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:32.680 conformable to the course of nature, which seems delighted with transmutation. 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:35.159 And this is great in multiple ways, because he's talking 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.360 about the idea that light could itself make a physical 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:41.719 change in matter. Right, that that's what happens in a photograph. 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.520 You're changing something in a fixed material object just by 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:50.000 exposure to light. And that's like the key chemistry behind photography. 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.520 But also when he talks about transmutation, the authors note 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.280 that this is in a way a nod towards alchemy, 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.800 and that Newton was this important bridge between the magicians 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:03.640 of old and the scientists of the new world. He 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.400 was sort of the last of the medieval magicians and 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:11.080 alchemists and the first of the modern scientists. Yeah. One 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:12.960 thing I think we'll probably touch on again and again 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.279 and all of this is that the photochemical nature of 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:20.000 photography uh and and, combined with lenses and all, it 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:23.120 does sound seem very magical. But in our age of 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:27.080 of digital photography and uh and and cell phone pictures, 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:29.680 it's easy to forget that that. Yeah, you had what 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:34.920 at heart was a chemical and an optical process. Yeah, 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.400 and why does Why would it be that photography is 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:42.360 anymore scientifically plausible than these fools errands of the alchemists, 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.200 like changing lead into gold. Right, you know that that 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.839 seems from a from a vantage point where you don't 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:50.159 know enough about chemistry to say, well, they're they're just 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.719 sort of like equally fanciful chemical imaginings, right, And and 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.920 some of the pre photographic processes that we're going to 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:00.839 discuss here they do sound like some sort of an 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.839 occult ritual. Oh yeah, I love this stuff. I can't 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.120 wait to get to it. So, uh, picking up on 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:07.480 what we talked about with the last time with the 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:10.560 camera obscure. Of course, the camera obscura was known very 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:13.480 well to the scientific thinkers of like the Enlightenment era, 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.400 and in the eighteenth century there was a steady increase 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.400 in interest in whether the kinds of images projected in 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:24.600 a camera obscura could somehow be fixed or made permanent. 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:26.599 This is something that came to mind for a lot 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:28.360 of people, but they couldn't figure out how to do 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.040 it right, because, as I mentioned earlier, you could have 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:34.680 a flint stone situation where some sort of small dinosaur 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:38.640 terrasaar then traces everything and creates an image. And we 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.160 did discuss in the in the Camerascura episode how some 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:48.719 individuals allegedly and in other cases certainly did use the 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:53.480 camera obscura to trace images and ultimately create works of 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:58.120 more traditional art. Yeah, da Vinci, I think, but possibly Vermeer, right, Yeah, 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:02.160 that's the theory anyway. But to have an actual chemical 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:05.560 process that makes this possible without the need of of 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:10.000 a mer or a cartoon dinosaur, that is the That's 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.760 the key area of development that we're gonna be discussing today, 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:17.480 to make a light capturing machine, something that automatically captures 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:22.080 an image of the natural world. Absolutely. Now, in all 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.080 of our episodes of invention, we we do try to 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:26.960 begin with a discussion of what came before, and we 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.080 we have a whole episode on the camera Obscureau which 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:31.240 gets into a lot of this. But I do want 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.800 to drive home just a few additional highlights to emphasize 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:41.400 just the importance of photography and why photography is ultimately 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:45.600 one of the most important technological, artistic, and cultural advancements 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.800 of the nineteenth century. So for starters in the pre 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:52.480 photographic world, unless you could afford a painter or craft 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:56.360 such art yourself, you could only rely on fragile memories 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:58.880 of friends and loved ones, uh in in order to 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.640 remember what they like. Both how living individuals looked in 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.480 the past when they were young, and how the departed 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.720 looked when they were still alive. So, you know, think 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.040 think about this. How fixed are your memories of your 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:15.040 loved ones appearances? Like, really think about it. Is it 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:17.200 a you know? Is it a is it a definite 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.320 solid thing? Or you perhaps remembering things just say a 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:24.440 little to the left of reality, you know, or are 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.720 you simply In many cases, I find myself doing this. 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:31.280 Am I remembering photographs of people or rather than really remembering, uh, 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.520 you know, an intense study of their facial features. I 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.560 have a potentially sort of crazy idea about this, just 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:42.200 something to wonder about. I wonder if it's possible that 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:47.520 actually lots of exposure to photographs of one's younger self 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:54.320 could potentially psychologically delay the process of maturing. Like that 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:58.560 you could potentially have a longer experience of feeling like 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.800 I am a child, I am a young person because 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.320 you are constantly seeing images of what you looked like 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.760 when you were younger. Interesting, Yeah, I'm not sure about that, 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:10.640 but I think that's something to consider. I mean, this 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:12.840 is the thing that's often been commented on that, you know, 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:16.560 like in in wealthy societies, with modern technology, there seems 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.040 to be a sort of like growing of the age 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.040 of adolescence. People feel like they are young for more 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.679 of their lives and like they become an adult later. Right, 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:28.800 And you know, I wonder if something playing a role 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:33.079 in this is just constant exposure to very reliable media 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.199 reflecting what you were like and what you were doing 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.280 when you were young. Well, and as as the father 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.800 of a six almost seven year old, I can tell 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:43.480 you that they do love to look at photographs of 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.640 themselves and of course hear stories about themselves. And and 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:48.559 I look back on, you know, my own childhood. I 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:52.120 remember being exposed to photo out physical photo albums a lot, 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:54.400 and uh and you know, we had photos hanging on 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:56.440 the walls and so forth. You know, you you grow 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.240 up in a photographic world. Yeah. Well, anyway, I'm not 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.600 convinced to that. It's just some possibility to think about. Yeah, basically, 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:06.400 I think it is important not to underestimate the power 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.439 of photography on just the way we think about ourselves, 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:11.679 our lives, and our loved ones. Absolutely not. I mean, 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:15.800 it completely changed the world. You can't overstate it. Now. 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.480 Another example would be the cataloging of fauna and flora 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:23.480 of the natural world. Before photographs, one only had descriptions 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:26.000 and drawings to go on. Can you imagine that? Like, 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.360 how if you wanted to be a naturalist, you know, 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:33.120 Charles Starwin type or something. Before photography, it was a 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:36.600 really important skill to be good at drawing, right, and 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.040 or to have access to someone who's good at it. 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:41.560 You know, I'm not good at drawing. I couldn't have 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:44.439 done it. Yeah, and and so yeah, when you introduce 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.360 writing or art into the scenario, you know, both are 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:52.040 highly subject to user error. Um and uh. You know, 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:54.400 despite the fact that we do have plenty of impressive 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:59.560 examples of of arts and descriptions from you know, from 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.720 natural list, you know, throughout history, but still we also 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.439 have some pretty bad examples to you know, where it's 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.040 like a game of telephone to describe what a line 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:10.200 looks like, it's etcetera. Yeah, we'll think about all those 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.199 drawings from the Middle Ages, like drawing of a drawing 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.800 of a rhinoceros, you know, yours rhinoceros. Yeah, we get 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:18.640 into this in an episode of Stuff to Plow your mind. 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:20.920 But it looks like what would happen if the idea 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.120 of our rhinoceros made it with a suit of armor. Yeah, 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:25.880 I mean it's it's got a kind of like a 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:29.600 tool album cover kind of d m T thing going on. Yeah, 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:31.679 it's a it's a wonderful image, but it's not quite 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:35.240 a rhino. Likewise, this would have placed you know, similar 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:41.720 constraints on anything regarding geographic data, military intelligence, and even 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:46.000 you know, pre photographic journalistic enterprises. You know, any attempt 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:50.880 to relay what was going on in another area, another 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:52.840 part of the world, anything that you couldn't see with 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.640 your eyes. Essentially, everything you understood about the world beyond 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.880 your bubble of experience was limited by the power of 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:04.520 written word and individuals artistic ability and the objectivity and 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.680 accuracy of the writer or artist or storyteller. Uh, and 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:11.360 the visual processing power of your own mind. And then 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.400 turn what they have given you into some uh you know, 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:16.800 vision of reality. And I think and I think that's 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.600 that's that's really really key. You know, it's easy to 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.480 take for granted today that I can take something like Egypt. 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.280 I've never been to Egypt, so I've never seen, you know, 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:28.120 the wonders of the pyramid. I've never seen what life 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.280 consists of. You know, there's wonderful. One of my favorite 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.720 things about traveling is just seeing what life seems to 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:37.160 consist of for for everyday residents of a particular area. 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.240 I have not seen any of those things in person, 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:44.199 uh in Egypt, but I have seen photographs, and of 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.600 course I've seen you know, the moving image as well. 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.040 But but just the power of photographs make those things 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:57.200 real in a way that descriptions and drawings um sometimes 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.680 struggle to recreate absolutely. But then take that, take that 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.000 same principle and and shrink it down in scale and scope, 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:06.880 So now you're not even talking about stuff all over 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:10.040 the world, stuff you're removed from in vast amounts of time. 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.560 Think about the way that it's necessary just to show 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.360 you something that you weren't there for yesterday, the way 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:21.040 it's now used to completely document life. Yeah, I mean, 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:25.120 for example, think about cell phone cameras now, like that's 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.160 just how ubiquitous has become. Most of us have a 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.600 camera on our bodies at all times that we can 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.760 whip out and record anything. You don't remember what your 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.040 license plate number is, well you just take a quick 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:39.920 picture of it. And then if that same automobile gets 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.600 in a fender bender, will you take a picture of it? Uh? 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.600 If you were to see Bigfoot or Ufo, well you 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:48.120 could conceivably take a picture of that as well. And 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.520 that's arguably one of the reasons there are perhaps fewer 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:56.560 fewer reported sightings of these things in our modern world. Yeah, 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:58.520 because now the question always be well, why didn't you 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:00.640 take a picture of it? Yeah, you have camera right there. 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:02.840 You have no excuse, right, I mean, I guess ghosts 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:05.000 canna get away with it because you can say, well, 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.560 the ghost didn't show up on camera. And yet uh, 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:11.600 you you look to you know, the early days of photography, 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:13.160 and you do see a lot of ghosts showing up 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.160 on camera. Because that's one of the other curious natures 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:20.920 about technology, Right, You introduce a new technology and um 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:24.160 it it it often makes room for new twists on 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:28.320 supernatural ideas. Yeah, it's not long before the occultists come knocking. Yeah, 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:30.120 we might have to come back to that on invention 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:33.840 for say Halloween episode to discuss how how the invention 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:38.800 of photography lead to how it influenced uh, supernatural and 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:45.560 spiritual ideas. Spirit photography totally the ectoplasm. Now, you know, 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:49.040 even now, photography was again one of the greatest cultural 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.440 and artistic shifts of the nineteenth century. However, as a 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:56.880 Peter Glossy, Associate curator in the Department of Photography at 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:00.160 the Museum of Modern Art, UM pointed out in his 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:04.520 book Before Photography, Painting and the Invention of Photography, photography 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.880 was quote not a bastard left by science on the 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.640 doorstep of art, but a legitimate child of the Western 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:14.560 pictorial tradition. And I thought, I thought this was this 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:17.840 was very um, this is very insightful, and I think 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:20.560 something that's very important to keep in mind. Uh So, 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:24.440 basically the idea is that photography, yeah, didn't just come 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.680 out of nowhere. It wasn't just completely just dumped like this, 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:31.040 uh dumped on the doorstep here. Uh No, it came 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.040 on the heels of Renaissance strides in the invention of 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:39.680 linear perspective and the championing of vision, as as as 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:44.080 the basis of artistic representation. Photography came on the heels 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:49.000 of the many gradually formulated pictorial strategies. And you know 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.680 of this pre photographic shift in artistic tradition. So I 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:54.480 think that's important to to keep in mind. You don't 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.200 just throw painting away because you have photography now. You 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:01.840 keep painting, obviously, because painting is is beautiful and in 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.400 its many forms. But more to the point, you use 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:09.160 the lessons of this long developed artistic tradition to inform 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.440 how this new technology will be used not just to 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.040 take pictures of the world, but to induce a kind 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:20.120 of instant, hyper accurate, chemical painting of reality. Yeah. Absolutely, 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:22.240 and I mean, of course, there are several ways to 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.280 think about what you just said. I mean, one quite 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:30.560 clearly is that photography emerges from a tradition of art 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.520 appreciation and art creation. I mean, some of the figures 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.120 who were the most important in the early days of 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.320 photography were in the arts. There were people who were 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.400 accomplished as draftsmen, you know, people who were good at 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.760 drawing pictures and recreating perspective and stuff. And the idea 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:50.520 of photography was seen as an extension of that artistic project. 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.840 It wasn't just science and technology. I think from the 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.040 very beginning it was art absolutely, But maybe now we 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.200 should focus on the science and think a little bit 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.000 about Okay, so we have this problem of people have 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.760 the camera obscure. They've they've learned ways to take an 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:07.800 image of the outside world and projected onto a two 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:10.640 D surface. But how do you fix the image? How 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:14.200 do you get something to stay once you've projected it? 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:16.720 And and that's the thing we should explore next. What's 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:20.760 the chemistry behind the photography revolution? Alright, On that note, 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:22.240 we're going to take a quick break, and when we 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:33.280 come back, we're going to discuss Johann Heinrich Schultz. Alright, 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.840 we're back. Tell me about Mr Schultz, Robert Alright, Joan 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:41.199 Johann Heinrich Schultz born seven died seventeen forty four. He 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.840 was a German polly math, best remembered for his seventeen 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:49.679 seventeen experiments with silver nitrate, which, by the way, had 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:54.359 been discovered by Albertus Magnus Uh, you know, noted Um 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:59.680 uh thinker and tinker and uh an alchemist in that 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.960 they're teenth century. Magnus document documented, for instance, that nitric 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:08.040 acid could separate gold and silver by dissolving silver. Yeah. 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.480 So silver nitrate is chemically it's a g N O three, 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:15.600 it's silver. It's basically a silver salt. Yeah, and it's 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:19.040 a precursor to various other silver compounds, but Schiltz was 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.359 particularly interested in the way that various substances mixed with 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:27.800 silver nitrate darkened in sunlight. Albertus Magnus himself had noted 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.760 centuries earlier that silver nitrate could blacken the skin. That 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.280 reminds me of the murder victims in the name of 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.119 the Rose, who have had their fingertips blackened by an 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.560 unknown substance. That becomes part of the mystery. Yes, not 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:43.480 only blackened fingers, but black and tongue. He did not 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.560 write with his tongue. I presume I love the alchemy 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.119 type origins here. One thing is that silver nitrate was 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:52.240 also known uh was. Before it was widely known as 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:54.840 silver nitrate or nitrate of silver, it was known to 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:58.800 the alchemists as lunar caustic. This, of course because the 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:02.800 alchemists saw in action between silver and the moon. So 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:05.719 a G N O three is a corrosive silver salt, 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.560 and it actually has antimicrobial properties with some applications in 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:12.880 the history of medicine, to say disinfect or to kill 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.920 outer layers of cells on on some body surface. It's 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.080 of course poisonous if ingested, So do not drink silver 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:24.760 nitrate yeah, highly effective on werewolves eyes as well. Perhaps, Yeah, 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.160 but keep the lunar caustic out of your mouth. But again, 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:30.720 Schultz was mainly interested in this darkening that occurred in 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.280 exposure to the sunlight. Right, And in his day, the 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.119 main hypothesis was that that heat caused the change. But 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.840 in his experiments he found that silver nitrate dissolved into 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:44.320 a slurry of chalk and nitric acid darkened when exposed 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.399 to sunlight, but not when exposed to the heat of 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:51.960 a fire. So uh. In proving this out, he used 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:55.800 stencils of words, and he put them around, you know, 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:59.000 over the glass of a bottle of this mixture, and 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:00.920 then he sat them the the bottle in the sun 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.520 and this caused the surface of the contents to darken. 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.560 We're exposed to the sun, and this, given the stencils, 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:11.480 would cause the darkening to spell out the letters of 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.520 the stencils. Right, So you could make shapes appear in 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:18.600 this solution by selective exposure to sunlight. Right. Instead of 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.280 coloring in the stencil with a SHARPI or magic marker, 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.240 he's allowing this chemical process to do it when exposed 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:27.520 to sunlight. And then you could shake the bottle and 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:31.280 the dark the darkened area would go away like sketch. Yeah, 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.160 and you could do it again, or continued exposure would 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:37.879 erase them as well. At any rate, these were ephemeral. 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:42.439 He had no means of making the result permanent. Now 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:47.720 do these sun prints constitute photography? I think most people 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.880 would say no, But apparently some historians, willing to take 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:54.320 a really broad definition of photography, are willing to credit 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:56.560 Truls with the invention of photography, at least have in 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.800 the past. Um, you know, I imagine that's also of 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.639 he interests if you definitely want to make sure that um, 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:06.040 say a German has attributed to you know, you see 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:08.400 a lot of that at different times in history where 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:11.720 there is kind of a you know, um, a nationalist 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:16.439 interest or just a patriotic interest in attributing the inventor 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:19.920 of a particular technology. The thing is, no matter how 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.760 you shake it, no pun intended. Um, you know, Schultz 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.600 is still a key individual in the invention of photography. 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.280 This is clearly not photography, but but yeah, it is. 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:35.040 It is important what he discovered here about how you 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:39.639 could you know, project images onto silver nitrate solution? Right, 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:42.680 And you know, I believe we'll get into Thomas Wedgwood 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.080 and a Humphrey Davy later. But but they worked with 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:48.840 the creation of shadow images after Schultz's death. Uh, and 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:51.520 these two were impermanent. Okay, well, I think maybe we 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:54.040 should move on then to talk about Thomas Wedgewood and 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:56.320 Humphrey Dabut, But first I want to set the stage 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.480 about where these kind of discoveries came from. So in 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:03.040 the latter half of the eighteenth century, there was a 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:08.560 very important, very influential supper club for intellectuals that that 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:12.480 met once a month in Birmingham, England. And these guys 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:17.879 called themselves the Lunar Society or sometimes the Lunatics spelled 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.200 with a k uh, And this was because they arranged 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:25.040 their meetings according to the lunar calendar, hosting their dinners 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:27.680 on nights of the full moon. So this is already 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:31.639 conjuring some awesome druid connotations, like you expect them to 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:34.040 bring out the bulls and start hacking at some mistletoe. 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:39.440 But these were not occultists. They were intellectuals, natural philosophers, liberals, 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:43.159 and freethinkers, many of whom had a great interest in 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:46.840 the emerging sciences and reportedly the real reason they arranged 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:49.359 their meetings to coincide with the full moon is because 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.119