Flash in the Pan

than that. It keeps us in touch with people all over the world, It connects us to all kinds of social media platforms, and most importantly, it captures those everyday moments in a snap. Our phone cameras are indispensable, and they are the result of decades of research and development to get smaller, faster, and more powerful, because, as they always say, the best camera is the one you have with you. But long before we carried them in our pockets,

cameras were big boxes made of wood and glass. It took hundreds of years to get to where we are today, and a number of photographic innovations occurred during that time, But one has been forgotten over the years, which is surprising because it was also one of the most influential. It was the result of work performed by an English polymath named William Henry Fox Talbot. In eighteen thirty five,

Talbot invented a way to capture images on paper. He was aware of certain devices used by artists, such as the camera obscura, which projected an image on the inside of a small box, but he wanted a way to save the picture permanently, and so he got to work developing a special kind of paper. It was writing paper coated in salt and silver nitrate. When the surface of the paper was exposed to light, the chemicals would darken

and preserve the image imposed upon them. It was a technique that he called the hollow type process, and Talbot used his special paper to capture photos of things like the construction of Nelson's column at Trifalgor Square and portraits of people that he knew. The images were a stark difference from today's photographs, though they almost seem like negatives today, where the light portions are dark and the parts where

there should be dark are actually light in tone. But remember, this was one of the first times that people saw a reproduction of a moment that was not sketched or painted. I mean this was groundbreaking. Meanwhile, another photographer was entering the fray with his own invention. His name was Louis de Guerre and he was a French artist who had been experimenting with silver salts and how they react to light.

His camera used a copper sheet plated in silver, and when that sheet was exposed to iodine crystal vapor, it formed a coating of silver iodine on one side, which was then blasted with external light. It took a while, but the exposure eventually rendered a clear image. His creation was called a de guerotype. But where the two processes differed was in the calotype's versatility. For example, the translucent negative image created by the calotype process could be used

to create positive prints. The two men also went in different ways when sharing their gifts with the rest of the world, and that's mostly why the calotype has all but been forgotten by modern photographers. You see, Talbot patented his process across England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, which cost him a pretty penny. He also spent a lot of

money defending his patents from infringement. This led to very few paid licenses for that patent and almost no lasting use within the industry, even though Talbot's work did more to push modern photography forward than Deguer's. In fact, by defending his patents so vociferously, Talbot helped spur innovation among amateurs who sought a way around expensive licenses, which pushed

the technology forward. Dagare, on the other hand, sold his patent to the French government, which made the Daguerotype process free for anyone to use anywhere in the world except in Britain. Daygare's agent, a guy named Miles Berry, had been granted a patent on his client's invention back in England, so now any person looking to make de garotypes there

had to pay for a license to do so. As for France, they compensated the inventor for his generosity with a lifetime pension, and it turned out that giving away one's patents to a more commercially viable process was the smart thing to do. Talbot, on the other hand, only loosened the restrictions on his own patents in the eighteen fifties after extensive pleading from the photographic community. He begrudgingly obliged. By eighteen fifty two, hundreds of calotypes were being produced regularly,

but it wasn't enough to overtake the de gherotype. A combination of Talbot's vicious defense of his patents and the calotype's exhaustive development process helped seal its fate. De Gerotypes eventually fell out of favor once other technologies, such as the ambrotype, provided quicker, less costly results, and that's what matters most when inventing something new. It has to be faster, cheaper, and better. Anything else just won't get developed. Our minds

are constantly changing. The more we experience and learn, the more we unlock. We might study a new language or a musical instrument, activities that can cause our neurons to fire in different ways than they had before. But sometimes the brain can be temperamental. For example, we can walk into a room and suddenly forget what brought us there in the first place, or we'll blank on the name of a famous actor we're trying to figure out what

other movies they appeared in. But perhaps one of the most peculiar ways our mind plays tricks on us is deja vu deja vu was a French term that was coined by philosopher Elmilbo rock Back in eighteen seventy six. In English, it translates to already seen. Deja vu is used to describe the sensation of having been in a certain place or situation before. Many of us have experienced

deja vu at one time or another. Will enter a room and suddenly be overcome with the feeling of having been there in the past, even if it's a brand new place. Deja vu has been linked to a number of different neurological conditions and disorders, including epilepsy and migraines. But there's a phenomenon that's similar to deja vu, and it's a trick of the mind as well, except it's the exact opposite. It's called jamme vou or never seen

in French. Unlike deja vu, which makes the person feel as though they've been somewhere before, jamez vou gives someone the sense that place that they've been to, or a situation they've already experienced, is somehow brand new to them again. It's hard to imagine such a thing happening to us today, but we actually deal with jam may vou more often than we realize. You can even do it right now by picking a random word like dog or road and repeating it out loud, over and over again. After a while,

it doesn't sound like a word anymore. Even writing at numerous times in row achieves the same effect. Back in two thousand and six, English researcher Chris Mullin at the University of Leeds published the results of a study he had conducted. He asked ninety four undergraduates to write out several words multiple times. Some words were common, like door,

while others were lesser known, such as sword. Participants were instructed to write as quickly as possible, but they were free to stop for any reason, for example, if they suddenly felt strange or if they're hand cramped. Mullin wasn't going to turn red in the face if anyone needed

a break. They were then told to provide their reason for the pause, and the results, seventy percent of the group put down their pens because the terms they were writing stopped looking like words entirely, and this typically happened after only about a minute. There jamz vous did not discriminate either whether a word was common or previously unknown participants stopped recognizing them after they were copied about thirty

three times. In a second experiment, Mullin had everyone write the article the an extremely common word that we are all familiar with. It took even less time for fifty five percent of them to stop scribbling due to ja me vu. One person reported that the words lose their meaning the more you look at them, while another claimed almost looks like it's not really a word, but someone's tricked me into thinking it is. Despite Mulin's modern experiment, the concept of je ma vou goes back a lot further.

American psychologist Margaret Floyd Washburn was testing in effects all the way back in nineteen oh seven. She had asked one of her students to stare at a word for three minutes, at which time the arrangement of the letters began to look unlike anything in the English language. Washburn called the phenomenon and the ensuing academic paper the loss of associative power in words. After long fixation. Decades later, with Chris Mullin's help, we finally had a much shorter

and much more catchy name. Much like its sister, deja vu can be caused by other issues of the mind, including epileptic seizures, but for many of us it's just part of everyday life. Our brains are capable of strange and wonderful things, and sometimes they make the words we see each day look like strange shapes from another planet. 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 Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.