Milk Drop Coronet

''Milk Drop Coronet'' is a high-speed photograph of a drop of milk falling onto the surface of a red pan, creating a splash resembling a coronet, taken by American scientist Harold "Doc" Edgerton on January 10, 1957. The picture was created using a camera connected to a beam of light, which triggered when the drop of milk obstructed the light.

Edgerton was an electrical engineer, and had personally developed a stroboscope which he used to take high-speed photographs of, among others, drops of liquid. He began capturing images of milk drops as early as 1932, and produced a similar picture to ''Milk Drop Coronet'' titled ''Milk Drop Coronet Splash'' in 1936.

''Milk Drop Coronet'' has been called an "uncannily beautiful image" by ''New York Times'' art critic Ken Johnson, appeared in ''Time'' magazine's list of ''Most Influential Images of All Time'', and exhibited in various art museums.

Background

Harold Eugene Edgerton was an American photographer and scientist who earned a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1931, where he served as a professor of electrical engineering. In 1932, Edgerton designed a stroboscope which could emit 60 10‐microsecond flashes of light per second and recharge in less than a microsecond, which could thus be used to take high-speed photographs. Edgerton initially intended to use the stroboscope for the study of electrical motors; however, he also took pictures of bullets being shot, insects flying, and drops of liquid. Edgerton had begun making photographs of drops of milk splashing as early as 1932, and four years later, he created a black-and-white photograph, titled ''Milk Drop Coronet Splash'', of a splash of milk forming a coronal shape, similar to ''Milk Drop Coronet''. In the second edition of his 1939 book ''Flash! Seeing the Unseen by Ultra High-Speed Photography'', Edgerton explains two principles which he believes should be kept in mind when viewing his photographs of splashes and drops:

Creation

The photograph was created on January 10, 1957. Milk was selected for its high contrast and its opacity. The picture's creation involved Edgerton connecting his camera to xenon flashtubes, then positioning it in front of a dripper that steadily released droplets onto a red pan. The precise moment was taken when the first drop briefly blocked a beam of light connected to a detector, initiating a flash after an adjustable delay. This first drop can be seen in the photograph as forming the splash, meanwhile a second drop can be seen above.

Physical copies

According to Gus Kayafas, the original photographic negative was destroyed. Several prints of the photograph have been made, which were distributed to and exhibited in art museums.

Reception and legacy

Art critic Ken Johnson, writing for ''The New York Times'' in 2001, called the photograph an "uncannily beautiful image" and compared Edgerton's work to Eadward Muybridge's photography. In 2016, the photograph was included in ''Time'' magazine's ''100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time''. The corresponding article read that the picture "proved that photography could advance human understanding of the physical world."

Mathematicians Martin Golubitsky and Ian Stewart used the photograph to illustrate the phenomenon of symmetry-breaking in their 1992 book ''Fearful symmetry: is God a geometer?''{{Cite book , last1=Stewart , first1=Ian Nicholas , author-link1=Ian Stewart (mathematician) , url=http://archive.org/details/fearfulsymmetryi0000stew , title=Fearful symmetry: is God a geometer? , last2=Golubitsky , first2=Martin Aaron , author-link2=Marty Golubitsky , date=1992 , publisher=Blackwell Publishers , others=Internet Archive , isbn=978-0-14-013047-8 , pages=6 , language=en , url-access=registration

See also

* List of photographs considered the most important

References

External links

* Archive of Edgerton's notebook from December 19, 1956, to April 29, 1958

Color photographs
1950s photographs
1957 works
Milk in culture