November 24: Photographs Don’t Lie?
On 24 November 1963, there was the first live television broadcast of a murder when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald while Oswald was being transferred from the Dallas Police Headquarters to country jail. Two days earlier, on November 22, Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Dallas Morning News photographer Ira Jefferson “Jack” Beers Jr. photographed the killing. The now iconic photograph appeared on the front page of the November 25 issue of the Dallas Morning News.
The first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1926. The exposure time was eight hours. The first photograph of an individual was taken by Louis Daguerre c. 1838.
It was not until 1839 that Sir John Herschel coined the word photograph from the Greek words φῶς (light) and γραφή (drawing). Therefore, a photograph was “drawing with light” which differed from drawing with paint or pencil because it would render a true image. Although a picture might paint a thousand words, a camera could not lie.
Gary Martin writes that “The earliest citation of the precise ‘camera cannot lie’ phrase we have found is from The Evening News, Lincoln, Nebraska, November 1895, complete with an intimation of the early doubts about the literal truth of the phrase:”
Photographers, especially amateur photographers, will tell you that the camera cannot lie. This only proves that photographers, especially amateur photographers, can, for the dry plate can fib as badly as the canvas on occasion.
In 1920, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle illustrated an article on fairies with photographs taken in 1917 by 16 year old Elsie Wright and 10 year old Frances Griffiths. Doyle believed in fairies and used what are known as the Cottingley Fairies as proof of their existence. In the 1980s, the girls admitted that the photographs had been faked.
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In the twenty-first century, photographic evidence is not as easy to believe; especially because of the ease of manipulating digital images. For example, the Beers photograph taken 49 years ago today has been modified to make it look as if Ruby and Oswald played together in a rock band.
–Steven L. Berg, PhD
Photo Caption: Meme showing Jack Beers photograph of Oswald being killed and altered version showing Oswald and Ruby in band. (top) Elsie Wright photograph of Frances Griffiths with a faerie. (bottom)
Although Today in History is primarily student written, there are some days when we do not have a student author. You will enjoy another student entry tomorrow.
Brooke Bode 
Makenzy Wilson 
Heather Daugherty 
Raquel Murillo 
Crystal Heidler 
Alan Hammell 
Matt Solomon 
Chris Duncan 
Jessica Linderman 
Trevor Corn 
Meagan Nystrom
I looked up more information about Nicéphore Niépce and found that he was a pioneer of more than just photography. He also invented a Pyréolophore, which was known as the world’s first ‘internal combustion engine.” He brainstormed and created it with the help of his older brother Claude, and finally received a patent on July 20, 1807 from the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, after successfully powering a boat upstream on the river Saône. It’s engine ran on controlled dust explosions of Lycopodium, but ten years later, they were also the first to invent a working engine with a fuel injection system.