Double Exposure

Colorado River, a concrete protector for the areas below. It irrigates more than one point five million acres of land in the United States and Mexico, where much of our fruit and cotton are grown, and it supplies water and hydro electric power to Nevada, Arizona, and California without fail. The Hoover Dam is truly a wonder of the modern world.

Built in ninety three, it took one thousand men, five years, and four point four million cubic yards of concrete to finish it, and like all great structures, it started out as little more than an idea. As families began moving out west in the late eighteen hundreds, they found themselves at the mercy of all sorts of things, including the local wildlife, harsh weather conditions, and the most dangerous natural

phenomenon of all, the Colorado River. People living in the lower River Valley often lost their homes and sometimes even their lives during the time is when the Colorado flooded, so in a group of surveyors decided to do something about it. They saw what could be possible if a dam was built in just the right spot on the river, and what it could do for the neighboring territories. No

more devastating floods. Instead, they could provide electric power for thousands and a feather in America's cap as an agricultural innovator. They considered blasting the walls of nearby Boulder Canyon, collapsing it into a sort of natural dam, but the met it was untested and there were no guarantees that would save money in the long run. Instead, on December twenty nineteen, five days before Christmas, the surveyors set out to find

the perfect spot to build their damn from scratch. It was during this hunt when the Colorado River experienced a flash flood. No one saw it coming, especially not John Gregory Tierney, who was caught in the rush and washed away in the river. Though his remains were never found, John was presumed to be dead. He became the first of almost one casualties of the Hoover Dam, both before

and during its construction. John left behind a son, Patrick William Tierney, who learned to get by without his father there to guide him. Before the damn's completion, however, Patrick experienced the second worst thing to happen to his family since his father is untimely death, the Great Depression. Everyone was out of work, and without his father there to help make ends meet, it was up to Patrick to support the rest of the family. He sought work wherever

he could. Unfortunately, Patrick had no notable skills and jobs were hard to come by. Then one day he came across an open position as an electrician's helper on a major construction project out west. You can probably guess what that project was too. That's right, the Hoover Dam. The wild endeavor his father never got to see get off the ground was now his Patrick worked on the enormous intake towers, responsible for moving water throughout the dam for

irrigation and hydro electric power. It was a good job and he earned a lot of money doing it. But then the unthinkable happened. In nineteen thirty five, three months after President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the dam in front of the American public, a freak accident sent Patrick falling off one of the intake towers on the Arizona side of the dam. He pomittedt to his death below. Patrick was officially listed as the final casualty of the Hoover Damn's construction.

The date of his death December, exactly fourteen years to the day his father, the very first casualty, was swept away by the Colorado River. It was a tragedy, for sure, but you know what they say, like father, like son. Long before we were shaking polaroids and our phones became our primary camera, we looked at photography through a different lens. It required large, specialized equipment to shoot photos. The process was slow, expensive, and the results were hit or miss.

In short, it needed time to develop. In eighteen twenty four, a process known as heliography allowed Joseph Nissa for Naps to take the first photograph. He would expose a plate of glass coated with a type of naturally occurring asphalt to the light in order for the asphalt to harden. After washing the plate with oil of lavender, the hardened areas stayed behind while the rest fell away, leaving Nieps with what we know today as a photograph. But the

process was long and cumbersome. Exposure times took days, and the only subjects that would sit still long enough to have their pictures taken for trees. As the years went on, scientists worked to refine those early techniques. New materials such as silver I had died and mercury vapors were introduced, and exposure time shrunk from days two hours, and then

two minutes. In eighteen forty one, almost twenty years after heliography's debut, one physicist realized that if he swapped silver I had died for silver bromide, he could shrink exposure times even more. What once took minutes now took seconds and made portraits of real life human beings possible. Add in the introduction of paper in eighty seven, and we start to get the picture of what would come to

be recognized as modern photography. But before we started winding rolls of cellul Lloyd into the backs of our codax, amateur photos were still being taken on photographic plates, rectangular sheets of glass coated in light sensitive silver salts. Once used, these plates were taken to specialty shops where they were developed onto paper. This is what happened to a mother in Germany in nineteen fourteen. Like any camera toting parent of a young child, she wanted to preserve a moment

in time of her little boy. She propped him up in his adorable white outfit and snapped a photo, burning the image into the glass plates ready to be developed. A Fortunately, the only thing developing in Germany in nineteen fourteen was War World War One, to be precise. The woman took the plate to a store in Strasburg, hoping she'd have the image back in time, but it was too late. War had broken out and the town grew too dangerous for her and her family to live in.

The mother fled to Frankfort just after dropping off the plate to be developed. The photo of her bouncing baby boy stayed behind, lost forever. Two years later, the woman, safe from the tanks and guns and grenades, gave birth to another child, this time a daughter. She wanted to commemorate the newest addition to her family with you guessed

it a photograph. This time would be different. They were not at risk of the war finding them again, so after a quick stroll to buy a new photographic plate, she did the same thing she had done two years earlier with her son. She propped her daughter up in front of the camera and click. There she was, her little girl, immortalized on glass. The woman dropped the plate at the nearest shop, and this time she was able to stick around long enough to pick up her prince.

But when she saw the photo, something was wrong. There was someone else in the picture. The new plate she'd bought hadn't been new at all. It had been mislabeled when it was transferred from a shop in Strasburg all the way to Frankfurt during the war. Behind the image of her beautiful baby girl was another person, a little boy dressed in white. Her little boy the photographs she had left behind at the beginning of World War One, it found its way home, and the mother had somehow

pulled off the impossible. She managed to get her two young children to sit still long enough or a picture together. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the world of lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.