DOI article:
J. [John] B. [Barrett] Kerfoot, The Tragedy of the Psycho-Kodak
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30574#0035
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A photographic record, horrible but fascinating, challenged my powers of
explanation. I spent hours recalling with the utmost minuteness my actions
and my psychic condition of the night before. I forgot to eat. Day and
night, tireless and absorbed, I worked on without pause, until at last, exhausted
but triumphant, I had gotten fairly upon the track of the principle, which,
for the purpose of this confession, I will call Astral Actinosity.
At last, I told myself, Ströler’s conditions were being fulfilled. Who
could ask a more important or a more useful labor than the photographic
recording of the thoughts of man ? For it was no less a thing than this
that I had in view. I heard myself hailed as the benefactor of the race,
the greatest discoverer of the age. Visions of wealth and fame, dreams of
sneers turned to adulation, filled my tired brain with anticipatory gratification.
Then the reaction set in, and I slept forty-eight hours on end.
When I awoke I made the round of my clubs, and announced casually
that I had made the greatest discovery of the century.
“Yes?” said Sneidecker, “Who is he?”
“He?” I asked. “He? It is a scientific principle, my man. A
scientific principle that in my hands is destined to revolutionize psychology;
make perjury a lost art; bombast of no avail; prevarication useless; mental
reservations unknown; remove the bushel from the light of truth, and let
the meek inherit the earth.”
“ Gee ! ” said Sneidecker. “And what will you do then?”
I could afford to disregard Sneidecker, however, for within a month I
hoped to show him a picture of himself that would make the conceited
puppy cringe. But I was wrong about the month. It took me six. There
were difficulties which in my first enthusiasm I had underrated, and there was
the hampering need of secrecy; but before the new year I was ready for the
test. That was before the days of filmless photography, but I had incor-
porated in my machine all the then improvements in the ordinary camera;
the scarfpin-lens, the vest-pocket magazine, the distendible Para film. It
had all been built in sections and assembled by myself. I had kept my
methods and my aims as secret as death itself.
Early in December I loaded up and was ready for the trial. I made a
series of exposures, and prepared to develop them with a trembling expecta-
tion which no words can describe. There, in that little case, I had the truth
about a score of human beings. I was about to look, not at, but into, the
human heart. I was about to sense the view-point of God himself.
You who read these lines can imagine with what care I developed the
compressed films; with what breathless anxiety I rolled the tiny negatives
out to 16x20 and proofed them. But you can make no guess at the con-
sternation with which I gazed at the first result, nor at the growing horror
and distrust with which I viewed the others as they came from the printing-
machine. Here was my best friend; the director of the Federated Chain of
North and South American Banks; a philanthropist with whose praises the
world happened to be ringing; half a dozen casual acquaintances; the
steward of one of my clubs; a few men snapped at random on the street.
31
explanation. I spent hours recalling with the utmost minuteness my actions
and my psychic condition of the night before. I forgot to eat. Day and
night, tireless and absorbed, I worked on without pause, until at last, exhausted
but triumphant, I had gotten fairly upon the track of the principle, which,
for the purpose of this confession, I will call Astral Actinosity.
At last, I told myself, Ströler’s conditions were being fulfilled. Who
could ask a more important or a more useful labor than the photographic
recording of the thoughts of man ? For it was no less a thing than this
that I had in view. I heard myself hailed as the benefactor of the race,
the greatest discoverer of the age. Visions of wealth and fame, dreams of
sneers turned to adulation, filled my tired brain with anticipatory gratification.
Then the reaction set in, and I slept forty-eight hours on end.
When I awoke I made the round of my clubs, and announced casually
that I had made the greatest discovery of the century.
“Yes?” said Sneidecker, “Who is he?”
“He?” I asked. “He? It is a scientific principle, my man. A
scientific principle that in my hands is destined to revolutionize psychology;
make perjury a lost art; bombast of no avail; prevarication useless; mental
reservations unknown; remove the bushel from the light of truth, and let
the meek inherit the earth.”
“ Gee ! ” said Sneidecker. “And what will you do then?”
I could afford to disregard Sneidecker, however, for within a month I
hoped to show him a picture of himself that would make the conceited
puppy cringe. But I was wrong about the month. It took me six. There
were difficulties which in my first enthusiasm I had underrated, and there was
the hampering need of secrecy; but before the new year I was ready for the
test. That was before the days of filmless photography, but I had incor-
porated in my machine all the then improvements in the ordinary camera;
the scarfpin-lens, the vest-pocket magazine, the distendible Para film. It
had all been built in sections and assembled by myself. I had kept my
methods and my aims as secret as death itself.
Early in December I loaded up and was ready for the trial. I made a
series of exposures, and prepared to develop them with a trembling expecta-
tion which no words can describe. There, in that little case, I had the truth
about a score of human beings. I was about to look, not at, but into, the
human heart. I was about to sense the view-point of God himself.
You who read these lines can imagine with what care I developed the
compressed films; with what breathless anxiety I rolled the tiny negatives
out to 16x20 and proofed them. But you can make no guess at the con-
sternation with which I gazed at the first result, nor at the growing horror
and distrust with which I viewed the others as they came from the printing-
machine. Here was my best friend; the director of the Federated Chain of
North and South American Banks; a philanthropist with whose praises the
world happened to be ringing; half a dozen casual acquaintances; the
steward of one of my clubs; a few men snapped at random on the street.
31
