Anna Atkins, an English botanist, published Photographs of British Algae in 1843, which is considered the first book with photographic illustrations. She made the images with cyanotypes, a process in which an object placed on chemically treated paper is exposed to sunlight and the uncovered paper turns dark blue. Sir John Herschel invented the cyanotype method, and Atkins used it to print the algae directly. Only 13 copies of the handwritten book are known to survive, and she later made more books of ferns and flowering plants with Anne Dixon.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.