Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 267, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1914 — Seeing vs. Photographing. [ARTICLE]

Seeing vs. Photographing.

The relative sensitiveness of the photographic plate and the human eye has been the subject of recent interesting experiments by Professor P. G. Nutting, of Rochester. An extra rapid plate was used for the tests. A source of light that could be "dimmed” at will nnd to any degree was placed twenty feet away from the -plate and from the eye. The professor found that a light so dim that it required three hours to produce a just perceptible image on the extremely senstlve plate was easily visible to the human eye after resting the latter for three minutes in total darkness. “In other words.” adds Professor Nutting, “an image on the retina just visible after partial adaptation to darkness would just produce an image on a photograptc plate after an exposure of one hour. The retina fully adapted to darkness is still a thousand times more sensitive than this.” v