Harold Eugene Edgerton . He was born on April 6, 1903, he was an American engineer and photographer. He developed a flash tube that could produce high-intensity flashes. This invention continues to be used in photographic devices today.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Career path
- 2 Death
- 2 Sources
Biographical synthesis
Harold Eugene Edgerton. He was born on April 6, 1903 in Fremont, Nebraska, United States. He worked as an American electrician, engineer and photographer.
He was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when, in 1926, he had developed a flash tube that could produce high-intensity flashes in just 1 / 1,000,000 seconds. This invention continues to be used in photographic devices today and because it can also emit bursts of light repeatedly at short regular intervals, it is ideal for use as a stroboscope. He conducted various research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . In 1932 he gained great notoriety for the invention of photographystroboscopic, applied to the scientific and photographic field; in addition, it opened the way to television and radar images. He created a low-voltage flash with high-power capacitors, which allows high-speed movements to be fixed on the film.
With this technology Edgerton was able to photograph things like drops of milk falling into a plate and bullets that traveled at speeds of up to 15,000 miles per hour; resulting in images appreciable for their artistic beauty and their value to industry and science.
Career path
In 1936 , the xenon tube flash appeared, which the Frenchman Dimitri Rebikoff incorporated into his 1970 “photographic torpedo .”
The device was very bulky and required very expensive special high-voltage batteries. The miniaturization of components in the 1970s then allowed Harold Edgerton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to use lower voltages and to power the flash capacitor with cheap, common batteries using an oscillating transistor, a tiny transformer, and a few silicon diodes.
The most revealing photographs of Harold Edgerton were taken in exposure intervals of millionths of a second, and have required extensive captions where it is narrated which object is represented before our eyes. These “necessary” feet that accompany images such as a drop of milk, which generates a crown when hitting a flat surface, demonstrate the need for the viewer to recognize the object that is presented outside of their most familiar perceptual scheme.
Death
He died aged 87 in 1990 in Cambridge , Massachusetts , United States .
