Deep media

O.2016-14

This article considers the pre-history and history of EG&G, Inc., a key contractor in America’s nuclear weapons programme in the Cold War. EG&G was cofounded by M.I.T.’s Harold Edgerton, Kenneth J. Germeshausen, and Herbert E. Grier after World War II in order to serve the nuclear weapons timing and firing needs of the U.S. Department of Defense and Atomic Energy Commission. The three men began their collaboration in the 1930s at M.I.T. with work on flash photography. Indeed, their partnership began in high-speed ‘stroboscopic’ photography in the 1930s, became focused on nuclear weapon timing and firing in 1945–50, and eventually re-focused on high-speed photography in the 1950s. Instead of emphasizing, as others have, the reproduction and circulation of photographic images of nuclear detonations, this article examines how the convergence of photographic and ballistic regimes was constructed around what we call the ‘deep media’ of timing, firing, and exposing.

Wyckoff

O.1995-9

INTERVIEWER 1: Today is Wednesday, February 15, 1995. And we’re talking with Charles Wyckoff about his work with Harold Edgerton. By way of introduction, could you tell us about how you came to MIT, and got into Doc’s lab. And tell us your story from the beginning. WYCKOFF: OK, there is a beginning. I went… Lire la suite Wyckoff

Papa Flash

O.1931-14

In 1932, the General Radio Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts, began selling its first stroboscope, consisting of a portable power unit connected by cable to a mercury-arc flash lamp. A capacitor discharged into the lamp ionized its gas and produced a brief, intense flash of light. The nineteenth-century Geissler tube, discharged intermittently, had become a stroboscopic flash tube. Listed under the code word “MAGIC” in the company’s catalogue, the 1932 GR strobe was capable of generating powerful, short flashes of light (5 microsecs) at precisely timed, variable rates of up to 180 flashes/sec. Over the next three decades, the company would develop and market a series of faster, more portable and relatively inexpensive strobes (see Table 1).

Quelques semaines après, on vit apparaître des traces sur le sol. Le flash de lumière et de chaleur dû aux rayonnements thermiques avait décoloré le béton et rendu visibles les ombres portées sur le sol. Là, un homme présent au moment du drame, ici une échelle, une vanne ou les pylônes dun pont, qui avaient en quelque sorte « protégé » le mur des dommages causés par la bombe.

http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/college/sand.la-motte servolex/spip31/IMG/pdf/fiche_repere_hiroshima_yves_klein-2-2.pdf