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Life-Altering Invention of the Day: The Sprayracha is a thing. A thing that actually works. Holy schnikes.
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Life-Altering Invention of the Day: The Sprayracha is a thing. A thing that actually works. Holy schnikes.
Darwinian Crowdsourcing
Chances are if you went to a party at Chuck Darwin’s house in 1868 you would have been a bit taken aback by the naturalist’s newest hobby. Instead of discussing the finer points of natural selection and inheritance in the light of Gregor Mendel’s recently published “Experiments in Plant Hybridization” (which Darwin was actually unaware of), he probably would have shown you these pictures.
The popularization of early photographic techniques in the 19th century allowed Darwin to conduct an impartial psychological experiment on the gut reactions to human expression. It was part of his search for universal core emotions, a debate that still goes on today (although nonhuman primates like chimpanzees appear to recognize them). Twenty-four people were presented with these photos and others, in order to collect their interpretation of the expressions shown (or forced).
Last year, the Darwin Correspondence Project invited the online world to take part in the experiment. 18,000 people responded, and you can view the expanded results of Darwin’s strange emotional experiment nearly 150 years after his original version.
In the 19th Century having a photograph taken was a lengthy process. Frustrated by the difficulties of getting children to sit still long enough to snap a proper photo , photographers in the 1800’s conceived of a technique called “The Hidden Mother”. Draping a sheet over the mothers head in an attempt to camouflage her as a part of the furniture to better emphasize the child, the mother was then able to hold her infant and keep them still long enough for the camera to get an exposure. Vintage photographs already have a eerie feel to them, but these images of moms as cloaked phantoms take the creep factor to the next level.
