Argonne Using X-Rays to Study 19th-Century Daguerreotypes

Argonne National Laboratory, the famed research center near Lemont and Darien, is blending science with history as it collaborates with the Smithsonian Institution in using X-rays to study some of the earliest photographs ever taken, the Chicago Tribune reports. 

According to the paper, those daguerreotypes—which took several minutes to take when they debuted in the 1830s—are very rare today, with only about 2,000 in the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, but those remaining provide history’s first exact snapshot of a bygone era.

Using Argonne’s Advance Photon Source, an X-ray machine that lets scientists see the plates at a molecular level, scientists hope to learn how to better preserve those remaining specimens as a historical resource, part of an scientific and cultural collaboration that the lab has increased over the past year, the paper said.

"Cultural heritage, even by itself, is important," Argonne physicist Volker Rose, the project’s coordinator, told the paper. "It's something that we have to preserve for our children and the generations that will follow. 

"As a scientist, I of course spend a lot of long days and nights in the lab… It can be very difficult sometimes to spend so many hours trying to get a result, but if you get it, it's fun to tell people. If I can contribute in that sense, particularly to the cultural heritage community, that's a big blessing to have."

Read the full story at the Chicago Tribune website.