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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 22 2016, @08:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-was-the-killer dept.

Strange Remains has an article on the history of Optography; the attempt to retrieve the last image seen by the eyes before death, and the 19th century experiments of Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne.

He believed it was possible to develop images, like photographs, from the eyes of the dead. Kühne called the image fixed on the corpse's retina an optogram, and the process of developing this image optography
...
Kühne's research was inspired by the work of physiologist Franz Christian Boll. In 1876, Boll discovered a pigment in the rods of the human retina that bleaches in the light and is restored in the dark. Kühne took this observation a step further by demonstrating that retinal pigment, which he called "visual purple" (also known as rhodopsin), remains after death unless the retinas are exposed to light.

A fascinating, and slightly macabre look at an early piece of the history of forensic science.

Link Spotted at Cocktail Party Physics Week in Review


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:13PM (#349683)

    So you don't need to eat brains (iZombie) or invade memories (Stitchers) to solve murders. Imagine that.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:16PM (#349686)

      But eating brains got you more than the last image seen in iZombie, and you got a meal out of it too.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:26PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:26PM (#349690)

        Which makes perfect sense because brains somehow retain their structure after cooking and memories can somehow be absorbed through the stomach.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:16PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:16PM (#349687) Journal

    The one about Parker
    https://strangeremains.com/2015/03/19/discovering-the-pieces-of-dr-george-parkman/ [strangeremains.com]
    is interesting.
    Basically, the cops facepalm a bit (surprise, surprise) and one guy solves the murder.

    Or did he do the murder? Muahahahahaha!

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:17PM (#349688)

    There was a movie involving this idea in the early 1970s:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RvL1xW1ySE [youtube.com]

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:23PM (#349689)

      Optography in fiction [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @12:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @12:52PM (#349881)
    The Watch in Terry Pracket's book Clay Feet used this method to "see" a victim's muderer. Does anyone know of any other authors who have done this?
    • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday May 23 2016, @04:37PM

      by isostatic (365) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 23 2016, @04:37PM (#349948) Journal

      The Watch in Terry Pracket's book Clay Feet used this method to "see" a victim's muderer. Does anyone know of any other authors who have done this?

      Many. I always think of Wild Wild West, but there's a whole list of them.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optography#Optography_in_fiction [wikipedia.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @10:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2016, @10:29PM (#352372)

        Will Eisner in one of the Spirit comics.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @11:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @11:12PM (#350059)

      The Watch in Terry Pracket's book Clay Feet used this method to "see" a victim's muderer. Does anyone know of any other authors who have done this?

      Terry Pratchett did, in Feet of Clay [wikipedia.org]. Never heard of this Pracket fellow; are his books any good?