Cultural English 441 - Ask an American – Saving the oldest photograph; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 441.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 441. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to have another one of our Ask an American segments, where we listen to other native speakers talking at a normal speed. We listen to them, and then we explain what they’re talking about. Today the topic is preserving and protecting what are called “daguerreotypes” – old photographs. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

Our topic on this Café’s Ask an American segment is saving old photographs. The oldest kinds of photographs we have are called “daguerreotypes.” “Daguerreotypes” (daguerreotypes) were made with a process that was invented by a Frenchman by the name of Louis Daguerre. Daguerre invented the technology to produce these early photographs. However, they became most popular not in Europe, but in the United States during the nineteenth century.

People loved going and getting their photograph taken even though, of course, it was at that time somewhat expensive to do so. It wasn’t like nowadays where anyone with a phone can take a picture. However, these daguerreotypes became very popular, and during the middle part of the nineteenth century in the United States, there were millions that were taken.

Unfortunately, like a lot of technology, it doesn’t always last a very long time, and daguerreotypes were replaced with other technologies for producing photographs. Nevertheless, we still have thousands of these daguerreotypes, and in recent years, people have gotten more interested in the technology that produced these early photographs.

We’re going to begin the Ask an American part of our Café today by listening to a man by the name of Daniel Weinberg. Weinberg works at the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, Illinois. Illinois is in the north-central part of the U.S. Mr. Weinberg is going to tell us a little bit about daguerreotypes and why they’re so interesting. We’ll listen to him and then go back and explain what he said. Let’s listen.

[recording]

“It was the first time you could go into a studio and have your photograph taken, and you could put it up somewhere and show it off. They’re luminous, and they’re almost three-dimensional, and you almost want to step into one.”

[end of recording]

Weinberg begins by saying that daguerreotypes for the first time gave people the opportunity to go into a studio and have a photograph taken. A “studio” (studio) is a place usually were some sort of creative work takes place. It could be making photographs. It could be making films. It could be painting – all of those artistic activities might take place in a studio. We also call the place where we record things a studio. I’m recording this episode in a small recording studio.

We use the verb “to take” when we are talking about photography. We talk about having your photograph “taken,” and that’s Weinberg says in his quote. He says, “It was the first time you could go into a studio and have your photograph taken.” He continues by saying, “You could put it up somewhere and show it off.” There are two phrasal verbs there. The first is “to put something up.” “To put something up” means to usually put it on a wall.

We typically put up photographs or paintings on the wall, but you could also put up the wall itself. “I’m going to put up a wall here.” That’s another possible use of that phrasal verb. “Put up” has a very different meaning in addition to the one I just gave you, which is to tolerate or to stand something that is unpleasant. “I am not going to put up with my neighbor’s dog barking all the time.” Seriously, it barks all the time. I don’t know what kind of food they give it there. Maybe they don’t give enough food. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s another use of “to put up.”

The other phrasal verb here is “to show off” or “to show something off.” “To show something off” is to show it to other people in a way that indicates that you are proud of it, that you are happy with this particular thing. A young woman who is engaged to be married might show off her wedding ring – or her engagement ring, I guess we would call it. “To show off” would be to show other people. So, a young woman might show her girlfriends the wedding ring that her fiancé – the man who is going to marry her – gave her. “Tto show off” means to show to other people so that other people can admire it, so that other people can say, “Oh, yes, that’s beautiful. That’s very nice.” Back in the nineteenth century, people who had their photographs taken would show them off to their friends.

Weinberg then says that these daguerreotypes were “luminous.” He says, “They’re luminous, and they’re almost three-dimensional, and you almost want to step into one.” The word “luminous” (luminous) means seeming to have a lot of light or even giving off light – producing light, if you will. Certain types of artwork, when you look at them, seem to produce light. The light seems to come from the artwork. Weinberg says daguerreotypes have that kind of quality.

He also says that daguerreotypes are “almost three-dimensional.” “Three-dimensional” refers to what we normally experience in the world, which is things that have a certain width, a certain length, and a certain depth. “Two-dimensional” would be something that only has height and width. So a photograph, for example, is considered two-dimensional. “Three-dimensional” would mean that it was like the real world – it was like the world we live in, where things aren’t flat, but have three dimensions: height, width, and depth.

Weinberg says that daguerreotypes are “almost three-dimensional,” meaning they’re obviously not three-dimensional, but they look as though they could have that third dimension of depth. The other thing that Weinberg says about these daguerreotypes is that “you almost want to step into one.” “To step into one” here means to enter into the photograph as if you were part of the photograph. That comes from their three-dimensionality, we could say. “To step into” something means to enter into something – in this case, to enter into the photograph itself. Let’s listen to Weinberg one more time.

[recording]

[end of recording]

Next, we’re going to listen to a man by the name of Ed Vicenzi. Vicenzi is a research scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Institution is the primary museum system in our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian is also a research institution where they do research on things such as daguerreotypes. Ed Vicenzi is going to talk about the daguerreotypes and the technology used in producing daguerreotypes. Let’s listen.

[recording]

“So, daguerreotypes are actually made up of a bunch of nanoparticles on the surface that scatter the light, and this is in some ways similar to the way high-technology devices are made today with nanotechnologies, so we’re also interested in what did nineteenth-century photographers know about nanotechnology, unwittingly.”

[end of recording]

Vicenzi begins by telling us that “daguerreotypes are actually made up of a bunch of nanoparticles.” When we say something is “made up of,” we mean it consists of. The physical ingredients of something are such and such. The molecule for water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Well, daguerreotypes are made up of a bunch of “nanoparticles.” “A bunch of” means a lot of. “Nanoparticles” refer to very small pieces of matter. The prefix “nano” (nano) means very, very small – extremely small.

Today, scientists talk about “nanoparticles” in a lot of new technologies. In fact, these technologies are called sometimes “nanotechnologies.” Daguerreotypes were using nanoparticles, or we could say nanotechnology, even before they understood what it was. No one, of course, called nanoparticles “nanoparticles” back in the nineteenth century, but according to Mr. Vicenzi, that’s exactly the kind of technology that daguerreotypes consist of.

He says that the nanoparticles – these very small pieces of matter – are on the surface of the daguerreotype. He also says that they scatter the light. “To scatter” (scatter) means to make something move quickly in many different directions. If you have a large group of people and someone suddenly fires a gun, that would likely scatter the crowd. Everyone would leave quickly, in many different directions. According to Vicenzi, the nanoparticles on daguerreotypes scatter light, and it’s that scattering effect that makes them seem, as Mr. Weinberg described them, “luminous.”

Vicenzi also says that this scattering of the light is in some ways similar to the way high-technology devices are made today, using nanotechnologies. So, he says that the research scientists are interested in knowing exactly what nineteenth-century photographers knew about nanotechnology “unwittingly.” “Unwittingly” means without actually realizing it.

Now of course, technically you can’t know something unwittingly. You can do something unwittingly, or you can implement some technology even though you don’t realize the scientific principles behind it. So, what I think Mr. Vicenzi is trying to say here is that these photographers used nanotechnology without realizing that they were using it; they were using it “unwittingly.” Let’s listen to this research scientist one more time.

[recording]

[end of recording]

Next Vicenzi will tak about his interest is in examining these daguerreotypes in order to preserve them for the future – in order to protect them from being damaged or from what we would call “deterioration.” Let’s listen first to what he has to say, and then we’ll explain it.

[recording]

“The technology that’s available at the Advanced Photon Source will allow me to study the very earliest stages of degradation of daguerreotype plates. They corrode over time, not quickly necessarily, but we need to learn the chemical mechanisms in order to understand how we can preserve these objects for the future.”

[end of recording]

Vicenzi begins by saying, “The technology that’s available at the Advanced Photon Source will allow me to study the very earliest stages of degradation of daguerreotype plates.” The Advanced Photon Source is the place where Vicenzi is studying deguerrerotypes. “Stage” (stage) here means step in a process. We can talk about a baby being in the early stages of its development. The baby then gets older and becomes a young child, and then a teenager, and then an adult, and then my neighbor – with a loud, barking dog all the time. Those are different stages in the development of life.

Well, the stages here are “stages of degradation.” “Degradation” (degradation) is when something starts to fall apart or change over time. It’s similar to another word in English, “decomposition,” although that usually refers to organic material – things that were once alive. The verb here is “to degrade” (degrade). We can talk about the audio signal “degrading” over time. If you record something on an old record or on an old cassette tape, after many years, the sound may begin to degrade. The quality will begin to degrade, because as things get older, they tend to fall apart.

Here, we’re talking about degradation of these photographs. He talks about daguerreotype “plates” (plates). The actual photographs were not on paper like we have photographs today. They weren’t on iPhones, probably. They were instead on pieces of metal, and that’s why they were called “plates.” These daguerreotype plates are beginning, basically, to fall apart. Scientists want to protect them. They want to preserve them.

These daguerreotypes “corrode over time, not quickly necessarily, but we need to learn the chemical mechanisms in order to understand how we can preserve these objects for the future.” “To corrode” (corrode) means to change chemically over time, to change in such a way that it no longer keeps its original quality. The daguerreotypes are slowly corroding. They’re corroding “not quickly, necessarily.”

He says the scientists need to learn “the chemical mechanisms.” “Mechanisms” refers to processes – how things are done. “Chemical mechanisms,” then, are the processes that the chemicals in the daguerreotypes are going through and how they were produced to begin with. If we know how exactly the daguerreotypes work in terms of the scientific principles, we would better be able to preserve them, to prevent them from corroding further.

“We need to learn the chemical processes in order to” – for the purpose of – “in order to understand how we can preserve these objects for the future.” “To preserve” (preserve) means to keep safe, to protect for the future. Let’s listen one more time.

[recording]

[end of recording]

It would be interesting to know whether you can still get daguerreotypes made – whether scientists know enough to reproduce the process. Most people would probably not be interested because, of course, photography is much more advanced now than it was a 150 years ago. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating area of scientific study, and also of art and technology.

Now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us.

Our first question comes from Pedro (Pedro) in Venezuela. Pedro wants to know the difference between “law,” “rule,” and “policy.” “Law” (law) usually refers to the official rules of a country or of a government organization. When we talk about “laws,” we’re usually talking about things that the government establishes, that the government says you must follow – rules that people have to obey.

“Rule” (rule) is a much more general term that refers to any sort of regulations or guidelines about how something should be done. You could have a rule in your classroom that anyone who wants to speak must first raise his hand. You can have lots of rules. They don’t have to be government rules. Anyone can set up or establish a set of rules or guidelines that people are supposed to follow.

I used the word “guidelines” (guidelines) here. “Guidelines” are usually more like suggestions – things that you’re supposed to do, but if you don’t do them, you won’t necessarily be punished for them. Rules and laws are things that, if you don’t do what they say, you may be punished for doing something different. You may have to suffer some negative consequence because you didn’t follow the rules or follow the law.

Finally, “policy” (policy) can refer to rules or laws that a large organization or government body has. “Policy” can also mean, more generally, a plan for something – how you plan on accomplishing something or a set of guidelines or rules on how you are going to react to certain situations. A school, for example, might have a policy against smoking, but the policy might include several different rules about smoking, or a series of punishments if the students are caught smoking, and so forth.

You’ll hear the word “policy” a lot when talking about the government and its plans for the future. We could talk about “foreign policy.” That would relate to how the government deals with other countries. The opposite of foreign policy is “domestic policy.” “Domestic policy” refers to how the government deals with people in its own country.

Angela (Angela) in China wants to know the meaning of two expressions: “to stem from” and “to be derived from.” “To stem (stem) from” something means to be caused by something, to originate from something. “His difficulty walking stems from an accident that he had last year.” That explains why something has happened.

“To be derived (derived) from something” means to be formed, or developed from something else, to be copied from something else. The word “carbs” (carbs) is derived from the word “carbohydrate” – it’s taken from that original word. Or you could say, “This story is derived from a famous novel.” It’s not an original story. It was taken from and probably adapted from this other piece of literature.

“Derived from” usually describes a process of taking or copying from. “To stem from,” however, usually is used when you’re trying to explain why something has happened or where something comes from. It doesn’t necessarily, and usually doesn’t, mean copied; it usually refers more to causation – how something came to be, why it is that way. “His difficulty walking stems from his accident.” That’s the cause of his difficulties.

Finally, Owlman (Owlman) in Russia wants to know the meaning of a couple of phrases and terms: “infomercial,” “hawking,” “exercise fad,” and “bring it on.” Let’s start with that last expression, “Bring it on.” “Bring it on” is a phrase that we use to express confidence that we are able to do something that we are being asked to do, or perhaps even challenged to do.

Someone says, “I want to play you in a game of one-on-one basketball” – just the two of us are going to play basketball. You could reply to that person by saying, “Bring it on,” meaning “Yeah, I’m ready. I’m going to beat you. I’m confident of my abilities in this particular area.” It’s an informal expression that is used by someone who is very confident about what he’s able to do. It’s almost a form of writing and saying how good you are at something. The next three terms – “infomercial,” “hawking,” and “exercise fad” – are all somewhat related. Let’s start with “infomercial” (infomercial).

“Infomercial” comes from two words, “information” and “commercial.” A commercial or advertisement that tries to educate people about the product that the company is selling is sometimes called an “infomercial.” It refers specifically to a short film or television show, usually 20 or 30 minutes long, sometimes an hour long, that is basically explaining how a certain product works and at the same time selling that – trying to get people to buy it. So, it’s like a long advertisement that includes lots of information about the product and why you would want to buy it, and perhaps even how you would use it.

“Hawking” (hawking) comes from the verb “to hawk.” “To hawk” means to sell goods, usually to sell them out in public. If you walk down the street and there’s somebody selling bananas, and he’s yelling out, “Bananas! Ten bananas for a dollar! Get your bananas here!” that person is “hawking” bananas. They are selling them out in public, often by shouting or yelling to get people to buy his product.

The third term, “exercise fad,” refers to things that become popular in the area of physical exercise. A “fad” (fad) is something that is popular right now, but might not be popular in the future. Different ways of dancing, for example, often are parts of fads. A few years ago, everyone was talking about the Lambada, and then they were talking about, I don’t know, Gangnam Style. It doesn’t really matter. These are dance fads. These are things that are popular, very popular for a short period of time, and then nobody ever hears of them again.

Well, in the world of exercise, of physical exercise, there are also “fads” – things that people try or think are very useful and become very popular. Nowadays, a lot of people are into something called “spinning” (spinning), which as far as I can tell basically involves sitting on a bicycle that doesn’t move – what we call a “stationary bicycle.” But “stationary bicycle” doesn’t sound very interesting. “Spinning,” however, sounds very interesting, and so perhaps that’s one reason why it has become an exercise fad.

How are these three terms related? Well, you’ll often see “infomercials” on television about exercise equipment, and the people on the infomercial are selling – we could say “hawking” – these particular pieces of equipment that are part of this new exercise “fad.”

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

studio – a place where some type of creative work takes place

* Francine used to paint in the garage, but as her work became popular and she started to make more money, she started working in an art studio downtown.

to show (something) off – to present something so that other people can see it, especially when it’s something that you’re very proud of and you want other people to admire it

* Melissa enjoys showing off her engagement ring.

luminous – glowing or seeming to have a lot of light or give off light

* People say that pregnant women seem to have luminous faces.

three-dimensional – not flat; with horizontal and vertical lines, but also with lines that come out toward the viewer

* Architects use many techniques to try to make their two-dimensional drawings seem three-dimensional.

nanoparticle – a very small piece of matter that often has surprising characteristics that are very different from those of bigger pieces of matter

* Scientists are using nanoparticles to develop waterproof paper and clothing.

to scatter – to make something move quickly in many different directions

* How does the teacher keep 24 students focused on a single task and prevent them from scattering all across the playground?

nanotechnology – technology that relies on the properties or characteristics of nanoparticles, the very small pieces of matter

* The titanium dioxide in your sunscreen is an example of nanotechnology.

unwittingly – without knowing or without intent

* They apologized for having unwittingly told Sheila about the surprise birthday party.

degradation – the process through which things change or break down over time, losing their structure or purity; decomposition

* Do you think television has contributed to the degradation of society?

to corrode – to be changed chemically over time, becoming weaker and maybe even being destroyed over a long period of time

* It’s so sad to see those beautiful statues being corroded by acid rain.

chemical mechanism – an explanation of how something happens in chemistry, including which chemicals are used and what happens in each step of a process

* How many chemical mechanisms are involved in photosynthesis?

to preserve – to save and protect something

* What can we do to preserve plant and animal diversity in the forests of the Pacific Northwest?

law – the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as limiting the actions of its members

* Have you ever broken the law?

rule – one of a set of clear or understood regulations or principles that control behavior or how things are done

* One of the rules in this house is that you must remain seated at the dinner table until everyone has finished eating.

policy – a plan or course of action, often with a government, political party, or business, used to influence and determine decisions and actions

* Where can I find a copy of the university’s policy on student cheating?

to stem from – to originate from; to be caused by something

* His interest in medicine stems from his own experience suffering from cancer as a young child.

to be derived from – to be formed or developed from something else; not original; copied from or traced

* What percentage of modern medicines is derived from compounds that occur naturally in plants?

bring it on – a phrase used to express confidence in meeting a challenge

* A: Are you ready for the presentation?

* B: Bring it on!

infomercial – an advertising film which promotes a product in an informative and supposedly objective style, but is simply a long commercial

* The infomercial claims that the exercise equipment will make me look like a professional bodybuilder in just four weeks, but I don’t believe it.

to hawk – to sell goods in public places by calling out to people

* All along the streets of New York City, people are hawking t-shirts.

exercise fad – enthusiasm for exercise products, styles, and more that many people have, especially one that is popular for only a short time

* The latest exercise fad is to lose weight by dancing in a hot room.

What Insiders Know

What to Do With Photos

In the past, Americans used to keep boxes filled with photos or placed them in “photo albums” (special binders or books with pages that protect photos for display), but with the “rise” (increased use and availability) of digital photos, people have many more “options” (choices) for “preserving memories” (remembering something or someone) with photos.

Of course, some people simply keep their digital photos on their computer. But others take advantage of “photo-editing software” (computer programs that let people manipulate (change) photos) and “desktop printers” (small printers that fit into a home office) to print photos in their home. “Crafty” (liking to use one’s hands to create artistic objects) people often enjoy “scrapbooking,” or artistically placing photographs in special books with colorful pages, “captions” (words describing what is shown in a photo), and other “memorabilia” like ticket “stubs” (the part of a ticket that is given back to the individual).

Other people like to “upload” (move a file from one’s computer to another location using the Internet) to special sites where they can purchase objects with those images. Then the photos can be “arranged” (with the positions set) into “photo books” (similar to albums, but with photos printed onto the page). Other popular items include greeting cards, calendars, coffee mugs, “mouse pads” (the rectangular surface over which a computer mouse is moved),”key chains” (decorative items attached to a ring that hold keys together), t-shirts, blankets, and more.