Victorian Pseudosciences: Solving Murders with Eyeballs
In the 1800s, Wilhelm Kühne created an image of a window from the eyes of a rabbit. Was this technology applicable to humans? Hosted by: Michael Aranda ---------- Support SciShow by becoming...
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Believe it or not, the Victorian era wasn’t all about corsets and funny-looking bikes. There was a lot of science happening in the 1800s, too. You might have heard of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Or the physicist Lord Kelvin, who worked on thermodynamics problems. But for all the groundbreaking theories and technological advancements, there were also a handful of pseudosciences that were spreading misinformation. Take forensic optography. It’s the idea that you can use an image imprinted on the light-sensitive tissue in the back of someone’s eye – their retina – to figure out who murdered them. There wasn’t much interest in the idea of optography until the 1840s, when photography became practical with the invention of the daguer...
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Believe it or not, the Victorian era wasn’t all about corsets and funny-looking bikes. There was a lot of science happening in the 1800s, too. You might have heard of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Or the physicist Lord Kelvin, who worked on thermodynamics problems. But for all the groundbreaking theories and technological advancements, there were also a handful of pseudosciences that were spreading misinformation. Take forensic optography. It’s the idea that you can use an image imprinted on the light-sensitive tissue in the back of someone’s eye – their retina – to figure out who murdered them. There wasn’t much interest in the idea of optography until the 1840s, when photography became practical with the invention of the daguer...
