Episode 211: Cutting and Ned

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Radiotopia, Publicradio, History, Natedimeo

4.8 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Music

Je ne pas si c’est tout le monde - Theme Comedie from Vincent Delerm’s score to the film of the same, long name.
Forbin’s Hi Fi from Michel Colombier’s score to Colossus: The Forbin Project
Boo’s Lullaby by Maria Chiara Agriro and Jamie Leeming
Helle (Ballade) from the great Phillipe Sarde score to that picture.
L’Espagne pour memoire from Michel Portal’s score to Un et a la garoupe
The Rain Never Stops on Venus by Michael Wollney
Je t’ai meme pas dit by Vincent Delerm.
From a Dream by Oregon
A version of Narcisus for Clarinet and Electronics as played by Thea Musgrave.

Notes

Good sources if you want to know more are Peter Manseau’s book about spirit photography and the spiritualist age (Cutting intersects interestingly with that crea), The Apparitionists, as well as this article by Jerry Ryan about the history of aquariums in Boston.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Memory Palace.
0:01.6	I'm Nate De Mayo.
0:03.1	There was a hole in the boat.
0:05.4	It was put there by a guy named Jay Ambrose Cutting, Boston Adventure who was particularly good at
0:10.7	working with metal and glass. He developed a photographic technique using glass negatives and a special...
0:17.0	You know what it doesn't matter. What does matter is that his technique, the amber type, was extremely popular among photographers during the middle of the 19th century.
0:27.0	And surely less important, but not not important.
0:30.0	I mean, this is not germane to the plot but certainly helps us understand his character as the name
0:35.5	Ambrose. His name. Which I kind of find likeably goofy like there are a million scientific innovations named after their inventor the Geiger counter
0:47.0	Doppler radar the de Guerra type speaking of old photography the Heimlich maneuver but it's always the last name.
0:54.0	There isn't a steveometer or a debie graph.
0:58.0	So J Ambrose cutting invents the amber type and patents it.
1:03.0	And he is one of those guys who is super smart but doesn't really have a head for business.
1:08.0	But luckily he has a partner who decides that they should license the amber type and soon they are collecting fees from pretty much every photographic studio in the United States.
1:17.5	The money is rolling in, but after a while it just starts to be a drag for cutting. So much of the business is about
1:24.7	sales and contracts and chasing down people who were Negon contracts and filing
1:30.0	patent infringement claims and all sorts of nonsense that he, a tinkerer, a dreamer, by all
1:36.0	accounts a great hang, he was a big affable dude who slap you on the shoulder, like your
1:40.0	cigar kind of guy. He gets sick of it.
1:43.3	He sells his patent.
1:44.8	He takes the money and runs and doesn't look back.
1:47.7	And this will not come back to haunt him.
	...

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