J. R. Wharton Eyerman (1906 – 1985) was an American photographer and photojournalist. He covered World War II for Life on the European and Pacific fronts and was one of the first to reach Hiroshima after the atomic bomb blast. With the war over, Eyerman drew on his technical background to develop several impressive innovations in photography, including an electric-eye mechanism that tripped the shutters of nine cameras to take pictures of an atomic blast at the Nevada test site; a camera that could function 3,600 feet below the ocean’s surface; robot cameras that took pictures 107 miles up in an early U.S. research rocket; and color film that was speeded up to make possible detailed photos of the aurora borealis.
