Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / Flash in the Pan

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Flash in the Pan · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: That little device in your hand or your pocket, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the one with the touchscreen and the web browser. It's
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  Speaker 1: called a phone, but its purpose has become more important
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  Speaker 1: than that. It keeps us in touch with people all
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  Speaker 1: over the world, It connects us to all kinds of
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  Speaker 1: social media platforms, and most importantly, it captures those everyday
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  Speaker 1: moments in a snap. Our phone cameras are indispensable, and
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  Speaker 1: they are the result of decades of research and development
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  Speaker 1: to get smaller, faster, and more powerful, because, as they
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  Speaker 1: always say, the best camera is the one you have
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  Speaker 1: with you. But long before we carried them in our pockets,
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  Speaker 1: cameras were big boxes made of wood and glass. It
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  Speaker 1: took hundreds of years to get to where we are today,
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  Speaker 1: and a number of photographic innovations occurred during that time,
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  Speaker 1: But one has been forgotten over the years, which is
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  Speaker 1: surprising because it was also one of the most influential.
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  Speaker 1: It was the result of work performed by an English
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  Speaker 1: polymath named William Henry Fox Talbot. In eighteen thirty five,
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  Speaker 1: Talbot invented a way to capture images on paper. He
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  Speaker 1: was aware of certain devices used by artists, such as
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  Speaker 1: the camera obscura, which projected an image on the inside
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  Speaker 1: of a small box, but he wanted a way to
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  Speaker 1: save the picture permanently, and so he got to work
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  Speaker 1: developing a special kind of paper. It was writing paper
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  Speaker 1: coated in salt and silver nitrate. When the surface of
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  Speaker 1: the paper was exposed to light, the chemicals would darken
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  Speaker 1: and preserve the image imposed upon them. It was a
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  Speaker 1: technique that he called the hollow type process, and Talbot
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  Speaker 1: used his special paper to capture photos of things like
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  Speaker 1: the construction of Nelson's column at Trifalgor Square and portraits
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  Speaker 1: of people that he knew. The images were a stark
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  Speaker 1: difference from today's photographs, though they almost seem like negatives today,
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  Speaker 1: where the light portions are dark and the parts where
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  Speaker 1: there should be dark are actually light in tone. But remember,
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  Speaker 1: this was one of the first times that people saw
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  Speaker 1: a reproduction of a moment that was not sketched or painted.
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  Speaker 1: I mean this was groundbreaking. Meanwhile, another photographer was entering
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  Speaker 1: the fray with his own invention. His name was Louis
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  Speaker 1: de Guerre and he was a French artist who had
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  Speaker 1: been experimenting with silver salts and how they react to light.
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  Speaker 1: His camera used a copper sheet plated in silver, and
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  Speaker 1: when that sheet was exposed to iodine crystal vapor, it
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  Speaker 1: formed a coating of silver iodine on one side, which
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  Speaker 1: was then blasted with external light. It took a while,
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  Speaker 1: but the exposure eventually rendered a clear image. His creation
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  Speaker 1: was called a de guerotype. But where the two processes
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  Speaker 1: differed was in the calotype's versatility. For example, the translucent
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  Speaker 1: negative image created by the calotype process could be used
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  Speaker 1: to create positive prints. The two men also went in
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  Speaker 1: different ways when sharing their gifts with the rest of
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  Speaker 1: the world, and that's mostly why the calotype has all
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  Speaker 1: but been forgotten by modern photographers. You see, Talbot patented
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  Speaker 1: his process across England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, which cost
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  Speaker 1: him a pretty penny. He also spent a lot of
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  Speaker 1: money defending his patents from infringement. This led to very
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  Speaker 1: few paid licenses for that patent and almost no lasting
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  Speaker 1: use within the industry, even though Talbot's work did more
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  Speaker 1: to push modern photography forward than Deguer's. In fact, by
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  Speaker 1: defending his patents so vociferously, Talbot helped spur innovation among
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  Speaker 1: amateurs who sought a way around expensive licenses, which pushed
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  Speaker 1: the technology forward. Dagare, on the other hand, sold his
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  Speaker 1: patent to the French government, which made the Daguerotype process
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  Speaker 1: free for anyone to use anywhere in the world except
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  Speaker 1: in Britain. Daygare's agent, a guy named Miles Berry, had
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  Speaker 1: been granted a patent on his client's invention back in England,
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  Speaker 1: so now any person looking to make de garotypes there
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  Speaker 1: had to pay for a license to do so. As
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  Speaker 1: for France, they compensated the inventor for his generosity with
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  Speaker 1: a lifetime pension, and it turned out that giving away
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  Speaker 1: one's patents to a more commercially viable process was the
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  Speaker 1: smart thing to do. Talbot, on the other hand, only
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  Speaker 1: loosened the restrictions on his own patents in the eighteen
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  Speaker 1: fifties after extensive pleading from the photographic community. He begrudgingly obliged.
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  Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty two, hundreds of calotypes were being produced regularly,
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  Speaker 1: but it wasn't enough to overtake the de gherotype. A
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  Speaker 1: combination of Talbot's vicious defense of his patents and the
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  Speaker 1: calotype's exhaustive development process helped seal its fate. De Gerotypes
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  Speaker 1: eventually fell out of favor once other technologies, such as
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  Speaker 1: the ambrotype, provided quicker, less costly results, and that's what
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  Speaker 1: matters most when inventing something new. It has to be faster, cheaper,
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  Speaker 1: and better. Anything else just won't get developed. Our minds
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  Speaker 1: are constantly changing. The more we experience and learn, the
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  Speaker 1: more we unlock. We might study a new language or
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  Speaker 1: a musical instrument, activities that can cause our neurons to
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  Speaker 1: fire in different ways than they had before. But sometimes
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  Speaker 1: the brain can be temperamental. For example, we can walk
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  Speaker 1: into a room and suddenly forget what brought us there
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  Speaker 1: in the first place, or we'll blank on the name
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  Speaker 1: of a famous actor we're trying to figure out what
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  Speaker 1: other movies they appeared in. But perhaps one of the
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  Speaker 1: most peculiar ways our mind plays tricks on us is
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  Speaker 1: deja vu deja vu was a French term that was
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  Speaker 1: coined by philosopher Elmilbo rock Back in eighteen seventy six.
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  Speaker 1: In English, it translates to already seen. Deja vu is
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  Speaker 1: used to describe the sensation of having been in a
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  Speaker 1: certain place or situation before. Many of us have experienced
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  Speaker 1: deja vu at one time or another. Will enter a
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  Speaker 1: room and suddenly be overcome with the feeling of having
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  Speaker 1: been there in the past, even if it's a brand
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  Speaker 1: new place. Deja vu has been linked to a number
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  Speaker 1: of different neurological conditions and disorders, including epilepsy and migraines.
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  Speaker 1: But there's a phenomenon that's similar to deja vu, and
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  Speaker 1: it's a trick of the mind as well, except it's
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  Speaker 1: the exact opposite. It's called jamme vou or never seen
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  Speaker 1: in French. Unlike deja vu, which makes the person feel
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  Speaker 1: as though they've been somewhere before, jamez vou gives someone
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  Speaker 1: the sense that place that they've been to, or a
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  Speaker 1: situation they've already experienced, is somehow brand new to them again.
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  Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine such a thing happening to us today,
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  Speaker 1: but we actually deal with jam may vou more often
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  Speaker 1: than we realize. You can even do it right now
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  Speaker 1: by picking a random word like dog or road and
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  Speaker 1: repeating it out loud, over and over again. After a while,
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like a word anymore. Even writing at
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  Speaker 1: numerous times in row achieves the same effect. Back in
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and six, English researcher Chris Mullin at the
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  Speaker 1: University of Leeds published the results of a study he
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  Speaker 1: had conducted. He asked ninety four undergraduates to write out
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  Speaker 1: several words multiple times. Some words were common, like door,
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  Speaker 1: while others were lesser known, such as sword. Participants were
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  Speaker 1: instructed to write as quickly as possible, but they were
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  Speaker 1: free to stop for any reason, for example, if they
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  Speaker 1: suddenly felt strange or if they're hand cramped. Mullin wasn't
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  Speaker 1: going to turn red in the face if anyone needed
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  Speaker 1: a break. They were then told to provide their reason
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  Speaker 1: for the pause, and the results, seventy percent of the
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  Speaker 1: group put down their pens because the terms they were
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  Speaker 1: writing stopped looking like words entirely, and this typically happened
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  Speaker 1: after only about a minute. There jamz vous did not
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  Speaker 1: discriminate either whether a word was common or previously unknown
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  Speaker 1: participants stopped recognizing them after they were copied about thirty
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  Speaker 1: three times. In a second experiment, Mullin had everyone write
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  Speaker 1: the article the an extremely common word that we are
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  Speaker 1: all familiar with. It took even less time for fifty
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  Speaker 1: five percent of them to stop scribbling due to ja
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  Speaker 1: me vu. One person reported that the words lose their
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  Speaker 1: meaning the more you look at them, while another claimed
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  Speaker 1: almost looks like it's not really a word, but someone's
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  Speaker 1: tricked me into thinking it is. Despite Mulin's modern experiment,
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  Speaker 1: the concept of je ma vou goes back a lot further.
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  Speaker 1: American psychologist Margaret Floyd Washburn was testing in effects all
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  Speaker 1: the way back in nineteen oh seven. She had asked
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  Speaker 1: one of her students to stare at a word for
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  Speaker 1: three minutes, at which time the arrangement of the letters
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  Speaker 1: began to look unlike anything in the English language. Washburn
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  Speaker 1: called the phenomenon and the ensuing academic paper the loss
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  Speaker 1: of associative power in words. After long fixation. Decades later,
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  Speaker 1: with Chris Mullin's help, we finally had a much shorter
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  Speaker 1: and much more catchy name. Much like its sister, deja
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  Speaker 1: vu can be caused by other issues of the mind,
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  Speaker 1: including epileptic seizures, but for many of us it's just
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  Speaker 1: part of everyday life. Our brains are capable of strange
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  Speaker 1: and wonderful things, and sometimes they make the words we
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  Speaker 1: see each day look like strange shapes from another planet.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.