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This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1931 and 1963, and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart and the copyright renewal logs. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (70 years p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 years p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 years p.m.a.), Mexico (100 years p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 years p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties. العربية ∙ Deutsch ∙ English ∙ español ∙ français ∙ galego ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ 한국어 ∙ македонски ∙ português ∙ português do Brasil ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenščina ∙ українська ∙ 简体中文 ∙ 繁體中文 ∙ +/−

The photograph was included in Seeing the Unseen: Twelve Photographs by Harold Edgerton, a portfolio published in 1977. Museum and auction listings with descriptions and photographs of the portfolio show no trace of any copyright notice. Examples: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

It was published again in the portfolio Harold Edgerton: Ten Dye Transfer Photographs, 1985. Again, images of the portfolio show no copyright notice. Most clearly, this can be seen in a LA Modern auction listing showing the title page and colophon page. Other examples: [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Furthermore, copyright may have expired for lack of renewal even if all copies included proper copyright notice. Other prints of the photograph exist from 1963 and earlier, for example the print in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. No relevant copyright renewal is found in the U.S. Copyright Catalog. It is not clear that these prints were ever published though.