The final "Late Show With David Letterman" airs Wednesday night, and to mark the event, we bring you a bit of local lore from the show. In February 1985, the late inventor, photographer and MIT professor Harold "Doc" Edgerton was a guest on "Late Night With David Letterman," along with his former student Gus Kayafas. Edgerton, famous for developing the electronic flash and stop-motion photography, captured Letterman dropping darts onto balloons, whose popping sound set off the camera.
"Doc was uncomfortable because he thought Dave just wanted to make fun of him," Kayafas said in an email. "It ended up being the most requested video from the MIT community whenever Doc gave a lecture or demo."
Kayafas, who founded MassArt’s photography department and is the president of Palm Press studio, played off the experience and made a montage. He took the negative from Edgerton’s 1936 photograph " Death of a light bulb" and enlarged it to fit Letterman’s face inside the exploding bulb. He punched a hole into a card to exclude everything in the background. Then he, Edgerton and Letterman signed three copies.
"He said this print should have been what the appearance was about," said Kayafas, who added that he'll be watching the finale, for old time's sake.
See Edgerton’s images and videos online through MIT’s Edgerton Digital Collections project.
