The MIT News Office honored Doc Edgerton with a story on January 4, 2013, describing how MIT Professor Harold Edgerton’s high-speed photography and sonar devices revolutionized ocean exploration.

“Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton was first drawn to underwater photography because of a leaky box. It all started in the mid-1930s, when E. Newton Harvey, a bioluminescence expert, approached him for advice on photographing phosphorescent deep-sea fishes for an upcoming book. Never one to refuse helping anyone, Edgerton assembled the camera and instructed Newton to encase it in a watertight box to lower into the depths. But soon, upon bumping into the author in Harvard Square, Edgerton learned that the box had distorted and cracked, allowing seawater in and ruining Newton’s project. From then on, Edgerton was determined to “see through” seawater with a camera of his own making. “Why not a spherical design or even a cylindrical one?” Edgerton wrote once. “Soon I was sketching all sorts of designs.”

Read the FULL ARTICLE on the MIT News Office website.

August 7, 2012

I’m a current PhD student in History of Science at the University of Bari, Italy. I have studied the life of H. Edgerton for my thesis Vannevar Bush and the birth of the Society of Information and seminar on Science and Photography and I have found a very interesting story I would love to share about Doc’s trip in Puglia, my region, and his work for the liberation of Italy.

Although I have not had the pleasure to meet H. Edgerton in person, through my studies, I have discovered how much his life experience had actually brought him close to me and my own region in Italy. So close, he contributed to unveiling the beauty of my culture and its ancient origins!

San Severo is a lively small southern Italian town located in the so called Tavoliere delle Puglie, (namely Table of Apulia) an extensive plain area where fields of wheat, olive trees and vineyards abound. It is also an area rich in traditions and history. Doc traveled to San Severo during World War II to put his innovative technology at the service of the allied forces and while doing so he also ended up shedding precious light on local archeological finds related to the origins of this little town.

Between April 2nd 1944 and March 3rd 1945 the allies chose San Severo as place of settlement for their troops, namely the Fifteenth Air Force and the Royal Air Force (RAF). The military units occupied several of the town’s public and private buildings as well as land and farm dwellings in the surroundings. The P-51B planes of the 31st Fighter Brigade used this area as strategic departure base bringing aerial support to the military operations in the whole of the Mediterranean territory. Flight patrolling for reconnaissance was one of their main tasks. A very valuable one as a matter of fact, often underestimated, usually performed at day or night using sophisticated photographic equipment. Photography had already played a relevant role in the First World War in support to evaluation and preparation of bomb attacks.

During the Second World War the photos sent to San Severo from the whole Mediterranean area proved even more crucial for the positive close of military operations thanks to the introduction of a new photographic system created by a young scientist of the MIT, Harold Edgerton. The system, patented by Edgerton in 1939 following the request of Major George Goddard, was made of a Flash lamp equipped with a large reflector. The Flash was synchronized with a camera for aerial photos and activated through a simple switch located in the pilot cabin. A condenser bank installed in the plane cargo brought the additional electrical power needed, thus providing autonomy for a higher number of good quality photos and ensuring safer flights above the fire line of anti aircraft guns.

The images collected were then analyzed by the personnel under the command of Major Leon W. Gray and specifically by the 5th Photo Reconnaissance Group, including the 15th Photo Reconnaissanse Squadron, the 32nd Photo Recon Squadron and the 4th Photo Tech Squadron that arrived to San Severo in 1943 and operated there until 1944. The photo interpretation process engaged a group of archeologists from GB, also hired to read the aerial images collected. Among them John Bradford and Peter Williams-Hunt, assigned to the Army Information Service based at the Masseria Torre dei Giunchi. It was their reading that led to the unexpected archeological findings regarding the origins of San Severo.

While inspecting the aerial images of the territory taken with Doc’s Flash, Bradford and Williams-Hunt noticed an unusual continuity of human settlement traces around San Severo. According to legends San Severo had been founded by the Greek hero Diomedes and had thus very ancient origins. However, the images were actually hinting to the existence of human settlements dating back to the Daunian era (the Bronze Age) and extending all the way through the Middle Ages.

Bradford later received permission from the RAF to further survey the territory by air to continue his research. At the end of the war with the help of his wife Patience, he launched several fruitful archeological campaigns that proved his first intuitions about the settlements to be right. About the subject, several years later he wrote “For example, on the Foggia Plain in South Italy, a single vertical air photo can map a Neolithic kraal, a Roman estate, a derelict medieval drove-way for cattle, and a modern settler’s farm built by the State — all side by side.”

His global approach applied to the history of landscape led to the application of a new methodological formula overcoming the idea of chronological phase differentiation analysis that had dominated archeological studies until then. The data collected with the excavations enrich today the archeological Museum of San Severo that hosts an opulent exhibition of the continuity of human presence on the territory and explains the reasoning behind it.

During his stay in San Severo between 1943 and 1944, Harold Edgerton experienced a completely different environment from the one in which he was doing research in Boston. As Technical Manager for the installation of the Flash lamp Type D-3 on the B-24 planes Doc took pictures of San Severo’s historical town center, with its noble baroque style buildings and imposing bell towers. And its population, culture and traditions charmed him even further. He used his camera to capture the wonder of people encountering for the first time the extraordinary power of American technology. He caught the grins of young boys staring at the tanks with curiosity and admiration. He followed the elders engaged in religious ceremonies and photographed the procession that every year, despite the war, occurred for the Festa del Soccorso, the village festival dedicated to the Madonna del Soccorso and the Saints Severino, the Abbot and Severo, the Bishop, the town’s patrons.

Passing through military operations, archeology and regional Italian traditions, Doc’s innovative technology left an impression that clearly went past a simple photo print.

See more photos of Edgerton in San Severo.

BMW M5 Commercial (6/2012)

Here is a great new take on Doc Edgerton’s iconic images — check out this phenomenal new car ad by BMW/Canada.

As the Edgerton Digital Collection website archivist, I like to monitor what links are being made to our site from other locations. Imagine my delight at viewing this YouTube video that I found through Matthew Panzarino’s technology blog that linked to our site.   So far Panzarino — news and Apple editor of TNW (The Next Web) – is the only blogger, among the many who have commented on this ad, to have highlighted the clear connection to Doc Edgerton’s work.  Thanks, Matthew!

Here are several of Doc’s images that surely provided inspiration for the ad:  HEE-SC-07018, HEE-NC-59001, HEE-NC-62001.

Schlieren photography (1973)

People who contact us at the EDC website are interested in Doc’s images and work in countless ways. Here are a number of links to recent  projects that have made use of Doc’s pictures.  If you have a link you’d like to share, please get in touch.

Enjoy!

Bicycle Cards: ”Faster Than A Speeding Bullet”

The Compound Eye: the many facets of science photography. “The Astonishing Stroboscope of Doc Edgerton,” by Alex Wild.

AOTUS:   “Work Culture”, by David S. Ferriero, National Archives.

Dark Roasted Blend: weird & wonderful things. “One Ordinary Drop of Water: Liquid Art and Droplet Photography,” by Avi Abrams. 

DIY Photography: ”Bullet photography at home,” by Maurice Ribble.

My Modern Met:  beautiful photography, incredible art and clever design. “What the Naked Eye Cannot See (20 Photos),” by Alice

Jane Chafins Off-Ramp Gallery Blog: contemporary art in an historic house. “The Dali Dimension,” by Jane Chafins

Pondly: promoting the best visual artists and graphic designers. “Scientific Approach to Motion by Harold Edgerton,” by Lily

A good place to start is the excellent biographical article, which includes a useful selective bibliography, written for the National Science Academy in 2005 by the director of the Edgerton Center at M.I.T., Kim Vandiver, with the collaboration of Pagan Kennedy.

• J. Kim Vandiver and Pagan Kennedy, “Harold E. Edgerton (1903-1990),” Biographical Memoirs, Vol. 86 (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005), pp. 1-23. Online at: http://web.mit.edu/edgerton/www/hedgerton-nas-memoir.pdf

Two publications associated with a recent MIT Museum exhibition celebrating Edgerton’s life and work are also to be recommended:

• Joyce E. Bedi, “The Man Who Stopped Time,” American Heritage of Invention and Technology, Vol. 13 (Summer 1997): 34-41.
• Roger R. Bruce (editor) et al., Seeing the Unseen: Dr. Harold E. Edgerton and the Wonders of Strobe Alley (Rochester, NY: The Publishing Trust of George Eastman House, distributed by MIT Press, 1994).

Edgerton’s iconic images are showcased in another popular book curated by his former student and long-time portfolio agent Gus Kayafas, of Palm Press, Inc.:

• Gus Kayafas, Estelle Jussim and Harold E. Edgerton, Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987).

For those interested in acquiring a more in-depth technical understanding of Edgerton’s research, and perhaps seeking inspiration to replicate some of his techniques, a serious yet very accessible book is Edgerton’s textbook:

• Harold E. Edgerton, Electronic Flash, Strobe, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). The original edition was published in 1970. New material was added in 1979 and 1987. The 1992 version is the second printing of the 3rd edition.

Two older books written by Edgerton and former MIT President James Killian are considered key works:

• Harold E. Edgerton and James R. Killian, Jr., Flash! Seeing the Unseen by Ultra High-Speed Photography (Boston: Charles T. Branford Co., 1954). The first edition was published in 1939.
• Harold E. Edgerton and James R. Killian, Jr., Moments of Vision: The Stroboscopic Revolution in Photography (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979).

Towards the end of his life Edgerton produced a book on sonar underwater imaging techniques that featured works by colleagues around the world — showcasing the long-ranging legacy of his early pioneering work in the field.

• Harold E. Edgerton, Sonar Images (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1986).

Doc Edgerton has been featured as author and scientist in several National Geographic Magazine articles since his initial collaboration with the NGS began in the 1940s. Many of his projects are celebrated in the following article:

• Erla Swingle, “‘Doc’ Edgerton: The Man Who Made Time Stand Still,” National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 172 (October 1987): 464-483.

Prepared by Claire Calcagno and Deborah Douglas

June 2012

Albert Falco was the handsome skipper and captain of Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s expedition ship CALYPSO, and featured in just about every film and book about the Cousteau oceanographic expeditions around the world. Doc Edgerton met him during his first collaboration with Cousteau in 1953, and they became good friends even despite the language barrier. In fact Falco took Doc and his son Bob on their very first dive in the Mediterranean Sea that year, at the ancient shipwreck site of Grand Congloué, off the coast of southern France.

Edgerton took hundreds of candid shots, as well as home movies, during his expeditions around the world with Cousteau and his team. But it was only very recently, at the end of 2011, that Falco discovered Doc’s pictures and movies through the EDC website — and he soon plunged back into an ocean of memories. Falco was writing a memoir, together with writer and diver Alain Foret. When they came across the Edgerton Digital Collection Falco ordered several dozen of Doc’s snapshots, and used a good number of them in his book. Titled Sormiou, Berceau bleu de mes souvenirs (“Sourmiou, Blue Cradle of My Memories”), it can be previewed here: http://www.plongee-plaisir.com/fr/Falco.html 

Falco became an avid marine conservationist in his later years. He lived just long enough to see the realization of his dream:  a national park protecting the region of Les Calanques in SE France that includes the newly named Protected Marine Reserve “Albert Falco.”

November 2, 2010

I was a biology student at Harvard University from 1933 until I got
my Ph.D. A delightful experience occurred in my senior undergraduate
year that involved Doc Edgerton and a rattlesnake. I wanted to learn
about poisonous snakes, so I had purchased a rattlesnake to keep in a
glass case.

I was introduced to Doc at MIT, probably by my sponsor,
John Welch. I knew that Doc had developed the electronic strobe light
and the ultra high-speed camera. When I mentioned the rattlesnake’s
strike to him, Doc said he would like to stop that action with his
strobe and camera. He knew that as a rattlesnake strikes, it opens its
mouth, pulls back a membrane, and protrudes the fangs, ready to inject
poison. So I took my rattlesnake in a glass case along with several
mice to Doc’s laboratory. He told me that when he pressed the
trigger on the camera, perhaps a hundred feet of film would fire
rapidly and he wouldn’t be able to stop it, so I was given the
difficult job of saying when the snake was going to strike.

The snake was very interested in the lunch we’d provided it, and
stared at the mouse, obviously deciding how and when to strike. Three
times I thought the strike would occur, but the snake did not
cooperate. Twice when I gave the alert, the film ran through the
camera but the snake didn’t strike, so the film was wasted. The
third time I said “Now!” the snake struck and drew back again so
quickly that the film had not even started running. Doc was very good
natured about all this and took out another camera to photograph the
rattlesnake as it ate its lunch, which had died instantly upon being
bitten.

Several years later, when I was a graduate student, my friend and
colleague, Hermann Rahn, sent Doc another rattlesnake, this time from
Wyoming, so that they could use the stroboscope to measure the
frequency of the rattlesnake’s tail as the snake gave its signature
warning. I know they were successful, though I’m not sure what the
frequency of the rattle was.

At around the same time, another good friend of mine, the brilliant
scientist Donald Griffin, worked with Doc to “stop the flitting
shadow which is a bat and show, in clear photographs, exactly how it
uses its wings” (Griffin 1946, p. 117, see below). In the article,
Don described the experience of working with Doc to photograph the
bats, as well as Doc’s ingenuity in devising a system to capture the
shots. The findings—bats flap their wings 15 times per second and
fly about 10 m/h—and three of Doc’s photographs were published in
Don’s fascinating article, “Mystery Mammals of the Twilight,”
National Geographic, July 1946, pp 117-134.

May 10, 2012

About 25 years ago (1987) I was living in Boston and one day we took
some out of town friends for a tour of the MIT campus.

After walking around for a few minutes we were approached by an
elderly gentleman who asked us if we wanted to see something
interesting. We said why not and followed him into a building and into
a lab. At this point I looked around and turned to my wife and friends
and said in an astonished tone, “Do you know who this is? It’s Doc
Edgerton!”

He proceeded to give us a strobe demonstration and told us about work
he was doing exploring the floor of the Charles River. He spent a
couple of hours with us and the lasting memory I will always have is
that he was so excited about what he showed us – as though he had just
discovered it all yesterday!

What a great day that was! What a great man – never to be forgotten.

Thanks, Doc!

by Claire Calcagno

Have you been to the MIT Fencing Studio lately, at the DuPont Athletic Center?  Check out Doc Edgerton’s multi-flash image of fencers from the 1930s used as inspiration for the studio’s renovation last winter.

MIT Fencing Studio image © Geoffrey Pingree

The studio, which hosts the Cambridge Fencing Center, has been transformed with an entire wall featuring a phenomenal 59-foot mural designed by Wing Ngan (Ink Design, Inc., 2011). The mural derives from an image that Doc Edgerton took in May 1939, when he photographed two fencers in action at his studio: Joseph Levis, a student at MIT in the 1920s and Silver Medal winner at the 1932 Olympics, and MIT fencing team captain Hrant Isbenjian.  In fact Levis had started coaching the MIT fencing team two years earlier, in 1937. About thirty years later Edgerton chose a multi-flash image of fencers for the cover of his seminal book, “Electronic Flash, Strobe” (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970).

Over seventy years later, their lunges and thrusts provide a vivid backdrop to today’s fencers at the Cambridge Fencing Center studio.

There are a good many Edgerton images around the MIT campus; this project is the latest addition.  Can you locate all the other sites?

Xenon flash lamp, 1960.

by Joe Parchesky (MIT ’64)

January 7, 2011

I was an undergraduate student at MIT from 1960 to 1964 and graduated with a BSEE. I had the pleasure of taking a couple of the courses that Doc Edgerton taught. I have fond memories of the time spent in the Strobe Lab taking high speed pictures of rifle bullets in flight and other assorted things. Doc was also a guest lecturer in some of my other classes. I loved the wax ‘foot’ candle he used to carry around whenever he was lecturing on something related to light. My favorite Edgerton-ism that I have remembered for 50 years was when he was describing the current decay waveform for a flash tube: “It decays out to infinity which might be as long as 10 microseconds.” Doc was also my senior thesis advisor. I did a study of the triggering on a small xenon flash lamp using an EG&G TW oscilloscope, which was the fastest available at the time.

My association with Doc Edgerton extended beyond the academic one at MIT. I also worked four summers and part-time during my sophomore and senior years at EG&G in Boston (and later in Bedford). Not only did I earn a significant portion of my educational expenses, but I gained a wealth of practical knowledge and experience that served me well in my early career. Three interesting experiences from that job are (1) working on underwater power supplies with an aeronautical engineer; (2) spending 6 weeks in 1962 on Christmas Island during the final days of the atmospheric nuclear testing program conducted by the US; and (3) helping to develop a xenon flash tube system for the Gemini-Agena space program that was used as a manual docking aid for early space
craft.