6.0496 Rs: Course; History on CD; Photos in Dead Eyes (5/104)
Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 10 Feb 1993 06:00:22 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0496. Wednesday, 10 Feb 1993.
(1) Date: 05 Feb 1993 17:39:29 -0500 (10 lines)
From: GZIEGLER@AMHERST.BITNET
Subject: Re: 6.0482 Intro Humanities and Computing Course (1/36)
(2) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 11:56:24 CST (9 lines)
From: "James Marchand" <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: American History CD-ROM
(3) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 6:09:21 EST (38 lines)
From: Abbie Angharad Hughes <abbies@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: 6.0474 Rs: Photos in Dead Eyes;
(4) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 19:28 EST (11 lines)
From: <BCJ@PSUVM>
Subject: Re: 6.0484 Rs: Photos in Dead Eyes
(5) Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1993 21:26:33 EST (36 lines)
From: Robert Braham <rmb@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: Photos in Dead Eyes
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 05 Feb 1993 17:39:29 -0500
From: GZIEGLER@AMHERST.BITNET
Subject: Re: 6.0482 Intro Humanities and Computing Course (1/36)
Hi--this is Georgianna Ziegler at the Folger. Why not have a few
people visit your class during the second half who have careers
combining the humanities with computerization? Folks in art history
are doing very interesting things with interactive videos, and of
course, your local reference librarian should be a good resource
person to call in. Good luck!
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 11:56:24 CST
From: "James Marchand" <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: American History CD-ROM
The Bureau Development, Inc. publishes a CD-ROM containing over 100 books on
American history: Bureau Development, Inc. -- 141 New Road -- Parsippany, NJ
07054 -- 800-828-4766. I have used it and found it satisfactory for my
admittedly modest purposes. It should certainly suffice for an
undergraduate class.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------52----
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 93 6:09:21 EST
From: Abbie Angharad Hughes <abbies@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: 6.0474 Rs: Photos in Dead Eyes; History Lists (3/42)
It was in1876 that Boll discovered a red pigment in the retina of a frog left
in the dark. Kuhne recognised that the retina was acting like a photographic
plate and that this pigment (visual purple - now rhodopsin) bleached in light.
He found that alum preserved differential bleaching and used rabbit eyes set
looking at a window as "cameras"; removing the eye, soaking the retina
overnight in alum and then finding an image of the window the next visible
on the retina in the hemisected eye cup. There is a famous picture of this
made in 1878 and you will find the whole story laid out in a nice article
by George Wald in Scientific American 1950 - "Eye nad Camera", this article
is one of those collected in the Sci. Am. Readings "Perception: mechanisms and
models".
The "developed" retinas were called "optograms". Wald mentions having read
a detective story as a boy in which the face of the killer is recovered from
a photograph of his image on the retina of the dead man's eye. Now I am not
sure whether my memory is playing tricks but I think I have seen such a story
somewhere in my collection but it is just possible that this is a false
memory from Wald's statement or an account elswhere.
As to reality, Kuhne did obtain the eye of a guillotined man in 1880 and
developed an optogram on the retina of one eye. Wald illustrates it, but what
is was
has not been established.
It is very unlikely that even a modern verison of such a technique would
obtain an image with significant detail and the eyes would probably need
to be stabilised for a significant time to avoid overlap and blurring. I
dont think that this area has been touched upon since the 1880s; I will
try to identify the story, but it was a topic of very great interest at the
time and I imagine it has been employed on many occaisons since.
Abbie Hughes, Melbourne (abbies@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------16----
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 19:28 EST
From: <BCJ@PSUVM>
Subject: Re: 6.0484 Rs: Joyce E-Text Reaction; Photos in Dead Eyes (2/37)
In the early 1970s I heard an urban legend about new technology that could
read voices and words somehow captured in the outer surfaces of paint in a
room where conversations had taken place. The origin may have been in an
Orwellian science fiction story -- but the capacity for folk paranoia is
nearly limitless, and not bound to any era.
Kevin Berland
Penn State
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------47----
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1993 21:26:33 EST
From: Robert Braham <rmb@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: Photos in Dead Eyes
>Date: 05 Feb 1993 11:42:18 -0500 (EST)
>From: AEVANS@DEPAUW.BITNET
>Subject: photos in dead eyes
Art Evans asks for additional lit. refs on the image, as it
were, of photos in dead eyes. Well, I think closely related
(and think of the nice midrash/commentary you can do to relate
it closer) is in the novel _Red Dragon_, written by I-don't-
know-who-but-the-same-guy-who-wrote-_Silence of the Lambs_.
In there (sorry to give away a good grisly plot point--stop reading
now if you care) the detective makes his first break on id'ing
the mass murderer by dusting for fingerprints (a photo, sort of)
on the eyes of the corpses, who themselves have been arrayed to
"look" at further scenes of mayhem.
Hope you find this tidbit enjoyable. Good luck on your
project. BTW, I'd be willing to bet you'd find similar
thought in medico/theological works from Med-Ren on Last
Rites and other similar works; there is a whole literature
on preparing for death (real, up-to-the-minute death), and
I would think they would suggest what to have in your eyes,
and therefore perhaps afterwards, at the moment of death.
--
Robert Braham | Graduate School of the City University of New York
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