Indelible Images Research Articles

Impact of Alaska oil spill spreading

Last week, signs intensified that Alaska's massive oil spill is a watershed event, rocking the oil industry in the way that the explosion of space shuttle Challenger shook the U.S. space program. Three weeks ago, on March 24, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling an estimated 11 million gal of North Slope crude oil, the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Since then, the media have conveyed, day after day, indelible images of an environmental disaster, detailing the spill's toll on pristine waters and shores, marine wildlife and fisheries, and the livelihood of regional residents. Just as with the Challenger disaster, public doubts are spreading about the competence arid credibility of involved government agencies and industry, and calls are rising for new policies and practices. Last Tuesday's Congressional Record, for example, published eight pages of speeches by House members attacking Exxon's unnecessary and extraordinary negligence, its botched cleanup operatio...

Reviews : Indelible Images: New Perspectives on Classic Films. By Bert Cardullo. London: University Press of America, I987. xv + 288 pp. £26.75 (hardcover); £I3.75 (paperback

Reviews : Indelible Images: New Perspectives on Classic Films. By Bert Cardullo. London: University Press of America, I987. xv + 288 pp. £26.75 (hardcover); £I3.75 (paperback

Railroad Construction in the Early Twentieth Century: The San Diego and Arizona Railway

Throughout the 1860s the construction of the transcontinental railroad caught the imagination of the public, planting an indelible image. To this day many people tend to think of railroad construction in terms of the technologically primitive Union Pacific and Central Pacific. The common image of American railroad construction portrays armies of Irish or Chinese workers, hundreds of miles in front of the tracks, grading the roadbed with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. Following close on their heels are the track gangs, laying miles of rail each day in order to take advantage of the huge Federal subsidies. The race across the plains and over the Rockies has obscured later developments in railroad technology.1

The Wings of the Dove and The Portrait of a Lady: A Study of Henry James's Later Phase

I whatever henry James's feelings may have been toward his favorite “Albany cousin,” Mary (“Minny”) Temple, while she lived, it is clear that at her death in 1870, she left with him an indelible image that made available to him as a writer large areas of human experience. This image figured more or less obscurely in several of his stories and minor female characters but according to his own testimony was most fully and consciously operative in his creation of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady and of Milly Theale in The Wings of the Dove.

A New Type of Fluorescent Screen

THE recording media at present utilized in examinations with the X-rays are the sensitive silver emulsion and the fluorescent screen. The former gives a permanent, indelible image, and the latter a transient and evanescent one, which disappears when the energization of the tube ceases. It seemed desirable for many reasons to possess a means by which the fluorescent image might be retained for prolonged intervals, hours if necessary, after the energization of the tube. Such a device could be applied, and utilized in many ways as an aid in the various radiological diagnostic procedures. To this purpose, I devised a fluorescent screen which retains the image for a prolonged period, and discovered a method of reviving the image, when it has almost completely faded from view. Screen The screen consists of a fluorescent emulsion which may be spread, as usual, on paper, or on any other surface permeable to the radiation, such, as aluminum, silver, etc. If the screen hitherto in use is such as gives the maximum fluorescence with the minimum amount of after-fluorescence, the screen I have devised may be considered as giving a maximum fluorescence and maximum after-fluorescence, thus permitting reference to the image at any time, and a transference of this image away from the point of energization of the tube. Besides this, the fluorescence of the emulsion may be intensified by the application of heat and thus an image which, with time, has almost faded, may be revived. Container The screen may be inserted in a regular film holder or in a box, or in a frame, or in any other contrivance. The exposure with the body in the desired position is made in the usual way. If the screen has been placed in a regular film container or holder, it may be taken to the dark room, and there viewed. One or more radiographs (positives) may be made from the fluorescent image by applying a film in a cassette to the surface of the fluorescent emulsion for several seconds. In the apparatus as shown in the accompanying illustrations (a sort of “camera inlucida”), the screen may be viewed after exposure in the same room, in the box arrangement, with the part of the body in situ, thus serving the same purpose as does a “finder” on a camera. The box (Fig. 1), of any convenient size, may be placed within a table so that the top of the box serves as part of the table top. On this the usual tunnel plate changer (T) is placed. By placing the part and the tube in the position desired, an exposure may be made on the screen with the lever in position (Fig. 2, H). The screen is then by means of the lever dropped from the horizontal position to the vertical position (Fig. 1, V) and then is viewed through the eye pieces (Fig. 1, E). If the desired view is obtained and the anatomic relationships sought are visible in the particular set-up, a film is slipped into the tunnel and the regular examination made.