Royal Scottish Society of Arts Lecture
and Opening Event of the Eighth Edinburgh International Science Festival
Photography:
A Crucial Technology for the 20th Century
Professor Heinz Wolff
Broadcaster and Director of the Brunel Institute for Bioengineering
Photography has been with us for around 150 years and in that time it has transformed our society and how we view the world.
From holiday snaps to the dream factories of Hollywood, photography has influenced governments and spawned billion dollar industries.
What is less known is the equally fundamental effect that photographic processes have had on printing and the development of consumer electronics, such as colour televisions and microprocessors, all of which we take for granted as central features of modern life.
It would be no exaggeration to say that these new technologies would have been impossible withoout the use of photography.
Professor Wolff launches the Edinburgh International Science Festival with a celebration of this versatile technology in a lecture event, liberally illustrated with experiments and working demonstrations, in which members of the audience may have to play a wet and slightly messy part.
Entry is by ticket only, available from the Science Festival Box Office, 149 Rose St., Edinburgh EH2 4LS. Tel (0131) 220 6220
The event runs from 1.30 to 3.30, with an interval of about 20 minutes.
SEVENTH MEETING of the ONE-HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIFTH SESSION of the RSSA
For further information about the RSSA, which normally meets on the first Monday of the month (October to April) at Craiglockhart Campus of Napier University, contact Dr A D C Simpson, National Museums of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF.