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06873_Field_TCUM T438.txt
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1996-04-10
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began to reflect on the camera obscura and wrote that “it was
during these thoughts that the idea occurred to me . . . how
charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural
images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed on
paper!” The printing press had, in the Renaissance, inspired a
similar desire to give permanence to daily feelings and
experience.
The method Talbot devised was that of printing positives
chemically from negatives, to yield an exactly repeatable image.
Thus the roadblock that had impeded the Greek botanists and
had defeated their successors was removed. Most of the
sciences had been, from their origins, utterly handicapped by
the lack of adequate nonverbal means of transmitting
information. Today, even subatomic physics would be unable to
develop without the photograph.