Direction: You have brief passages with 5 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
In 1760, a man named Tiphaigne de la Roche made a bizarre prediction. In an imaginary story called Giphantie, mirror images of scenes from nature could be captured permanently on a canvas covered with a sticky material. After the material dried in darkness, the image would remain on the canvas forever. At the time, the idea was unheard of. It was not until the following century that the concept of photography was born, starting with some experiments by Nicephore Niepce. Nicephore Niepce, who was a French inventor, was interested in lithography, which is a printmaking technique. He was experimenting with lithography when he found a way of copying etchings onto glass and pewter plates using a chemical that changes when it is exposed to light. He learned to burn images onto the plates and then print the images on paper. He shared his findings with Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, who improved the process and announced it to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839. The Daguerreotype, the photography method named after Daguerre, met with great success. It was so successful, in fact, that French newspapers said the French public had an illness called Daguerreot-ypomania! Daguerreotypes were inexpensive and were suitable for portraiture. People called the Daguerreotype a “mirror with a memory”. Some portrait artists went out of business when Daguerreotypes came into vogue. Others became Daguerreotypists, now known as photographers.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
bizarre : very strange or unusual behaviour.
lithography : the process of printing from a smooth surface, for eg. a metal plate, that has been specially prepared so that ink may only stick to the design to be printed.
etchings : pictures that are printed from an etched (cut lines into) piece of glass, metal, etc. in order to make words or a picture) pewter : a grey metal made by mixing tin with lead, used especially in the past for making cups, dishes, etc.
Daguerreotype : a photograph taken using an early process that used a silver plate and mercury gas.
portraiture : the art of making portraits.
vogue : a fashion for something.