One area of the Columbus Museum of Art was dedicated to movement. All things shown there represented movement from mobiles that you the visitor could create to photos and art about movement. This is a photo of Harold Edgerton (American 1903- 1990) taken at MIT in 1962. And who was Harold “Doc” Edgerton? He was an inventor, explorer, entrepreneur and beloved professor at MIT who invented the electronic flash.
He pioneered the electronic stroboscope, or strobe light, the flash mechanism that revolutionized high speed and stop motion photography in 1931. This allowed us to see stages of motion at levels of detail previously never seen before.
I had initially walked past these photos when DH pulled me back and told me that he had met the man. It was during his new student tour at MIT that this man popped out of nowhere, grabbed a few of them saying ‘You must see this!” took them into his lab, showed them some strobe lighting then returned them to the tour with a goodbye and was gone.
As he never introduced himself to any of the students they were left a bit confused until the tour guide replied “Oh that’s just Doc Edgerton, he always does that.” At the time he was professor emeritus and pretty much just did what he wanted to.
As a photographer I thank you, Doc.
Teri 📷
Bullet Through Banana 1964
Cutting the Card Quickly 1964
Images by T.Dashfield Photography 
I’m very familiar with Edgerton.
It’s pretty amazing what high speed and flash photography can reveal in our visual world.
And thanks to him we can see all that wild stuff.
Cool photos and story. Happy weekend!
Thanks and happy weekend to you! Hope no more snow for you.
Fingers crossed!
Lucky DH
I guess since he remembers it to this day it must have left an impression on a young student.