Method
of Experimenation - Background to Photographic Techniques
Wilfrid
Boisvert suspected that all motion was quantized long before
he was able to secure of a physical proof of the action with photography.
He was
faced with major challenges:
If moments do exist as
discrete periods of immobility, how could he measure their duration?
If the actual spacial displacement (the "leap") of objects in motion is too short, would it be too difficult
to discern?
if the duration between each
discrete moment is instantaneous (absolutely nil time), how do you show "nothing?"
He needed
a solution that would satisfy empirical requirements, and yet
be easy to reproduce. It was then he remembered a long-lost
image he had seen in a magazine during the war years. It showed a a bullet clearly moving in steps. He had long since lost the magazine, but he realized he must reproduce that photo.
His early attempts
in the 1950's and 60's to photograph a bullet moving in steps
were mostly unsuccessful. His initial shots of the bullet
appeared only as a streak. He observerd that as the bullet
passed in front of the camera lense, it would compress air
molecules, creating a "tunnel" of air which would reflect
light--a phenomena he dubbed "the air-wall". This
was compounded by the fact that even his highest-velocity
bullet failed to move fast enough to cleanly overstep its
own form, causing additional multiple exposure issues that
further obfuscated the image of the bullet. Light from the
flash would reflect off the airwall and the bullet at each
step, causing a dense streak. The air wall and the inability
of most objects to outstep its own dimensional form are the
reasons why discontinuity of motion has not been accidently
discovered in the past -- the appearance is one of continuity.
To resolve
these problems he realized he would need to hit a smaller
object with the bullet, thereby propelling the object at a
much faster velocity than the bullet itself (much like a bat
hitting a ball). He placed objects smaller and lighter than
the bullet, such as a pellet, washer or nail, in the path
of the bullet. This solved his two problems: first the smaller
object moved at high-enough velocity to easily outstep its
own three-dimensional form at each displacement. Secondly,
the turning and tumbling of the object would effectively "break"
the airwall by scooping air at each turn.
Darkening
the room and using a relatively long 1/2000 second strobe,
he began to detect to distinct, discernable steps on the film.
As his technique improved, he was soon able to photograph different objects moving at various velocities. In some
cases, objects were hurled across the picture plane in one
or two long steps. Because the displacement was instantaneous,
even light was not fast enough to reflect off the object during
the leap. The remnants you may observe in the photos are from
the light reflecting off compressed air particles that were
created during the displacement, but have not yet dispersed.
Working
closely with his son Adrien, Boisvert continued to refine
his technique until he was able to secure shots of the steps
and stops with each photo he took. Boisvert took hundreds
of such photos while he was experimenting.
A second
breakthrough came when Adrien was having their photographic
negatives developed at a camera store, and he saw a poster
from Honeywell, advertising their Strobonar 360 flash unit.
It showed a picture of a bullet stopped during a 1/70,000
second duration flash. Boisvert realized that if a bullet
can be stopped at 1/70,000 with no blur, then the moment of
immobility might be of a longer duration than he had thought.
Any object or group of objects, at vaiable speeds, should
be recordable in the 1/70,000 second moment. With the 1/70,000
of a second flash he worked to demonstrate the actual length
of the atomic moment, and demonstrate simultaneity by showing
objects moving at different speeds are both immoble during
the same duration of time.
It should
be noted that Boisvert conducted these experiments in his
own home during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. As such,
these experiments were executed using the equipment
and films available at the time. Film was processed through
a local commercial developer. Digital cameras were not yet
available, and personal computers were just being introduced
to the public.
The following
pages describe the equipment used and its setup for each experiment.
