Harold “Doc” Edgerton—How Fast Is Fast?
Called “the man who made time stand still,” MIT Professor Harold “Doc” Edgerton delighted and amazed the world by retooling an obscure laboratory instrument and producing photographs that no one had ever seen before. Using a stroboscope, Edgerton captured moments in time that were too fast to be seen by the naked eye—the shattering of a light bulb, hummingbirds in flight, a drop of milk falling into liquid. Learn more about MIT’s popular professor by watching this excerpt from the 1994 film How Fast is Fast?. Produced by MIT Video Productions for the Edgerton Foundation, the film showcases the motivations behind this remarkable engineer/educator as well as the novelty and beauty of his photography.
View How Fast is Fast? in its entirety at the From the Vault collection at TechTV.
Milk Drop Falling Into Reservoir of Milk by Harold Edgerton, 1935, printed later
via: Metropolitan Museum
Test Tube Shattering by Harold Edgerton, 1930s
Edgerton’s 1932 invention of the stroboscopic or electronic flash quickly effected a revolution in photography by enabling artists to work in locations and under conditions that had never before been possible. Although he himself was a scientist, Edgerton’s achievement with the camera secured his place as much in the history of photography as in science.
via: Metropolitan Museum
