Flashy progress

Staff · Issue 143, Mar/Apr 2025 · pp. 4–5

Editorial Peter Rowlands peter@uwpmag.com Flashy progress Feel free to stop reading this at any time or to nod off whenever you want. It is for acquired tastes but relevant, and hopefully useful, so here goes: Progress is a great thing and innovation should surely be embraced but there is a modern capability which is offered to us by many manufacturers based on ‘We can make it do this’. Take, for example, adding artificial light underwater. Early attempts, pre 1900, involved igniting magnesium in an oxygen rich glass enclosure. This produced a ‘flash’ (not a strobe) of bright light which illuminated the subject during a long/timed exposure which could be up to 30 minutes. Incredibly, underwater, this was the same basic technique that was used until the early 1970s - disposable flashbulbs (not strobebulbs) with bare wire ends which, when shorted together in a metal holder, ignited and pro…