An attempt to discover a murderer by photography.
--The
Evansville (Ind.) Journal gives the following account of an attempt to discover a murderer by photography:
‘
A few days since
Mr. Adams, a photographies of this city, at the solicitation of some gentlemen who had read of similar experiments in
France, took his instrument and visited the scene of the late murder in German township.
This was some thirty hours after the murdered man had breathed his last.
There was a great deal of dust flying and a great crowd collected, which materially interfered with the success of the experiment, but notwithstanding unfavorable circumstances,
Mr. Adams succeeded in taking a tolerably fair "negative." Upon this he has been experimenting, and we were called on to witness the result of his experiment.
He had taken an ambrotype picture of the eye of the deceased, and then rubbing out everything but a single object apparently in the centre of the eye, this was placed under an ordinary magnifying glass.
At the first glance the object appeared blurred and indistinct, but, getting the proper focus, the outlines of human face were at once distinguishable.
The image was apparently the face of a man with unusually prominent cheek bones, long nose, and rather broad forehead.
A black moustache was plainly seen and also the direction of the eyes, which seemed to be looking at some object sidewise.
One of the eyes was as clearly seen as the eyes in a common ambrotype or genotype.
Mr. Adams is continuing his experiments; but whether he will succeed in making any clearer developments remains to be seen.--His labors thus far are abundantly rewarded by the success which has attended his efforts, as it seems to us he has demonstrated that an object was pictured upon the eye of
Mr. Herke at the time of his death, and that the object was a human face.
Similar experiments, we are informed, have been made in
France with great success, and mysterious murders unravelled through the instrumentality of
Daguerre's wonderful art. Notwithstanding we had heard of these strange things, we were still under the impression that "dead men tell no tales." until a recent experiment has shaken our faith and almost convinced us that dead men may yet speak.
’
