Article ID: CBB478180881

Dust Plate, Retina, Photograph: Imaging on Experimental Surfaces in Early Nineteenth-Century Physics (2015)

unapi

This article explores the entangled histories of three imaging techniques in early nineteenth-century British physical science, techniques in which a dynamic event (such as a sound vibration or an electric spark) was made to leave behind a fixed trace on a sensitive surface. Three categories of “sensitive surface” are examined in turn: first, a metal plate covered in fine dust; second, the retina of the human eye; and finally, a surface covered with a light-sensitive chemical emulsion (a photographic plate). For physicists Michael Faraday and Charles Wheatstone, and photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, transient phenomena could be studied through careful observation and manipulation of the patterns wrought on these different surfaces, and through an understanding of how the imaging process unfolded through time. This exposes the often-ignored materiality and temporality of epistemic practices around nineteenth-century scientific images said to be “drawn by nature.”

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Authors & Contributors
Garuccio, Augusto
Anderson, Nancy Ann
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette
Blondel, Christine
Brusius, Mirjam
Chapman, Mike
Journals
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Foundations of Chemistry
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
化学史研究 [Kagakushi kenkyū; Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Chemistry]
Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, Fachgruppe Geschichte der Chemie
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Publishers
Pavia University Press
Ashgate
Reaktion Books
Stanford University Press
Sussex Academic Press
University of Chicago Press
Concepts
Photography
Technology
Physics
Chemistry
Optics
Visual representation; visual communication
People
Talbot, William Henry Fox
Draper, John William
Duhem, Pierre
Fragonard, Honoré
Kelvin, William Thomson, Baron
Lippmann, Gabriel
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
20th century, early
17th century
20th century, late
Places
Great Britain
France
Germany
Italy
Europe
Japan
Institutions
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
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