Now the idea that photography can capture a thought seems absurd. But a hundred years ago, the impulses that the human brain produces, scientists tried to photograph.
Strange experiment
Think of poor Madame Dargett. How she most likely sighed as her husband hovered over the sofa where she was going to rest, and in his hands were photographic plates. “Now I will turn off the lamp and put a fluid seal on my forehead,” said Luis Dargett. "I'll give you the same plate to do the same." Obediently, Madame Dargett took the plate and held it at a distance of one centimeter to her face, as her husband ordered. There was complete darkness all around, and she gradually began to feel her eyelids stick together. She woke abruptly when a cold, smooth plate touched her face. The next day, Commandant Dargett burst into his wife's room, carrying the developed photograph with him. Under a subtle birdlike image, her husband signed: “A photograph of a dream. Eagle".
Trying to photograph thoughts
It was one of those images that convinced Commandant Dargett that he was successfully able to photograph the thoughts that were in the human brain. In a letter to the French Academy of Sciences in 1904, he stated that this method could help capture the workings of human thought. While he was definitely wrong, his story teaches some very important lessons for modern scholars.
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Scientific boom
At the turn of the twentieth century, Dargett's experiment fit into the general picture of the time. A decade later, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen became the first to describe X-rays, using it to photograph the bones in his own wife's hand. Soon, Marie and Pierre Curie demonstrated the radioactivity of polonium and radium. Suddenly, the world was filled with strange, invisible phenomena that could be shown to everyone using technology. Modern filters on Instagram and Photoshop are used to distort the real image, but for scientists (and pseudoscientists) in the early twentieth century, photography represented a gateway to a world never seen before. Soon, more and more types of radiation began to appear, including the completely discredited "N-rays" by Rene Prosper Blondeau. And then Dargett appeared,who spoke of "human radiation" in the form of thoughts, which he called "V-rays."
The essence of Darget's method
"When the human soul gives birth to a thought," wrote Dargett in 1911, "it sends vibrations to the brain, the phosphorus contained there begins to radiate, and the rays seep out." To capture these rays, he invented a “portable radiograph,” consisting of a photographic plate attached to a headband. When such a structure was placed on a person's forehead, the device produced abstract hazy images that Dargett interpreted on his own. Among the evidence he gathered for his theory was not only a depiction of his wife's dream of an eagle, but many other images such as "Bottle", "Another Bottle" and "Walking Stick."
