BKSEEUNS.RVW   950509
 
%A   Roger Bruce
%C   55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA   02142-1399
%D   1994
%G   0-262-02387-3
%I   The MIT Press/George Eastman House
%O   U$39.95 curtin@mit.edu
%P   89
%T   "Seeing the Unseen"
"Seeing the Unseen", Roger Bruce, 1994, 0-262-02387-3, U$39.95
 
The book is quite unprepossessing in its translucent plastic cover.  The
feeling of someone's university paper is heightened by the handwritten notes on
the end papers.  This perception is appropriate:  the work presents, in text
and pictures, the life and experiments of Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton, who trailed
his "down home" manner through the halls of MIT to "Strobe Alley".  There, he
and his students produced the devices and studies which let people "see the
unseen" in activities too fast for human vision.
 
Originally intended for the visual inspection of rotating machinery (some of
his early work was supported by sales of devices to mills), Edgerton's work
extended to stop-motion photography, high speed filming, high intensity
illumination, and even sonar studies.  The images produced supported scientific
research ranging from surface stress analysis to animal studies to turbulent
airflow.
 
Almost from the beginning, however, the pictures captured the imagination of
artists and public alike.  An extract from Edgerton's notebooks mentions a
discussion with an advertising agency--in 1935.
 
The book is being published in conjunction with an exhibition of Dr. Edgerton's
work which will be displayed at six venues around the United States between now
and the end of 1997.  (I'll be going to see it in Seattle in the spring of
1996--let's do lunch.)  You don't expect them to publish the whole exhibit, but
still, the restricted number of printed photographs is surprising.  A CD-ROM
included with the book provides a significant number of images, plus a limited
use version of the Kodak viewer for Windows and the Mac.  Unfortunately, the
operation of the viewer is not exactly intuitive, and the picture quality can
vary tremendously, depending upon your monitor.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995   BKSEEUNS.RVW   950509

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