Harold E. Edgerton

Hammer Breaks Glass Plate '89, 1933
Gelatin Silver Print, 24" x 20"

Harold E. Edgerton was born in Fremont, Nebraska, in 1903 and died in Massachusetts in 1990.  He received a B.S. from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1925, an M.S. in 1927 and a Ph.D. in 1931 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He was professor of electrical engineering at M.I.T. from 1928 until 1972.  He was also a founding partner of Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier, a technical products and services firm.  His photographs have been exhibited internationally and are included in the collections of the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.  As an electrical engineer, he approached the medium as a means of scientific research and was a pioneer in stop-action photography.  In 1931 he invented the stroboscopic flash, which gives off brilliant light for a microsecond, freezing action while rendering precise detail.  Edgerton’s work had a profound influence on the course of twentieth-century photography.  His photographs changed the way we see the world, often transcending the limits of scientific documentation and passing into the realm of visual icon.

 

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

 

www.edgerton-digital-collections.org/

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