120 years before cats dominated YouTube and organized to one day achieve world domination, they were the subject of one very adoring photographer.
Recently, a family member reached out to YouTuber Mathieu Stern with a fun fact: There was possibly a time capsule hidden in his old family home.
The photography experiment-focused video-maker looked into it, and sure enough discovered a box he estimates dates to roughly 1900, based on its contents — which included 120-year-old glass-plate negatives of cat photos.
“I then decided to develop them using one of the oldest ways to make solar prints: cyanotype,” he wrote in a blog post.
Cyanotype is a photographic printing process dating to the 19th century that produces cyan blue-tinted photos, also called blueprints. Inthe video, Stern is successful in applying the process, and he makes two blueprints of the ancient cats.
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“She wanted her beloved cat not to be forgotten,” he writes in a video slide, cutting to a framed picture of the kitty.
He then develops the second glass plate, this one featuring two cats and a dog, before showing himself closing the time capsule back up.
Just goes to show that people have always adored their cats.