The Evolution of Photography

On March 29th, 1878, Mr. Charles Bennett published his method of increasing the sensitiveness of gelatino-bromide plates. It may be briefly described as a prolonged cooking of the gelatine emulsion at a temperature of 90°, and, according to Mr. Bennett’s experience, the longer it was cooked the more sensitive it became, with a corresponding reduction of density when the prepared plates were exposed and developed.

April 20th of this year Mr. J. A. Spencer died, after a lingering illness, of cancer in the throat. Mr. Spencer was, at one period in the history of photography, the largest manufacturer of albumenized paper in this country, and carried on his business at Shepherd’s Bush. In 1866 he told me that he broke about 2,000 eggs daily, merely to obtain the whites or albumen. The yolks being of no use to him, he sold them, when he could, to glove makers, leather dressers, and confectioners, but they could not consume all he offered for sale, and he buried the rest in his garden until his neighbours complained of the nuisance, so that it became ultimately a very difficult thing for him to dispose of his waste yolks in any manner. After the introduction of Swan’s improved carbon process, he turned his attention to the manufacture of carbon tissue, and in a short time he became one of the partners in the Autotype Company, and the name of the firm at that period was Spencer, Sawyer, and Bird; but he ceased to be a partner some time before his death.

At the South London Technical Meeting, held in the great hall of the Society of Arts, I exhibited my non-actinic developing tray, and developed a gelatine dry plate in the full blaze of gas-light. A short extract from a leader in the Photographic News of November 14th, 1879, will be sufficient to satisfy all who are interested in the matter. “Amongst the many ingenious appliances exhibited at the recent South London meeting, none excited greater interest than the developing tray of Mr. Werge, in which he developed in the full gas-light of the room a gelatine plate which had been exposed in the morning, and exhibited to the meeting the result in a clean transparency, without fog, or any trace of the abnormal action of light.... We can here simply record the fact, interesting to many, that the demonstration before the South London meeting was a perfect success.”

1880 had a rather melancholy beginning, for on January the 15th, Mr. George Wharton Simpson died suddenly, which was a great shock to everyone that knew him. I had seen him only a few days before in his usual good health, and he looked far more like outliving me than I him; besides, he was a year my junior. The extract above quoted was the last time he honoured me by mentioning my name in his writings, though he had done so many times before, both pleasantly and in defending me against some ill-natured and unwarrantable attacks in the journal which he so ably conducted for twenty years.

Mungo Ponton died August 3rd, 1880. Though his discovery did little or nothing towards the development of photography proper, it is impossible to allow him to pass out of this world without honourable mention, for his discovery led to the creation and development of numerous and important photo-mechanical industries, which give employment to numbers of men and women. When Mungo Ponton announced his discovery in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal in 1839, he probably never dreamt that it would be of any commercial value, or he might have secured rights and royalties on all the patent processes that grew out of it; for Poitevin’s patent, 1855, Beauregard’s, 1857, Pouncy’s, 1858 and 1863, J. W. Swan’s, 1864, Woodbury’s, 1866, all the Autotype and Lambertype and kindred patents, as well as all the forms of Collotype printing, are based on Ponton’s discovery. But so it is: the originator of anything seldom seeks any advantage beyond the honour attached to the making of a great invention or discovery. It is generally the petty improvers that rush to the Patent Office to secure rights and emoluments, regardless of the claims of the founders of their patented processes.

On March 2nd, 1880, I delivered a lecture on “The Origin, Progress, and Practice of Photography” before the Lewisham and Blackheath Scientific Association, in which I reviewed the development of photography from its earliest inception up to date, exhibited examples, and gave demonstrations before a very attentive and apparently gratified audience.

On the 27th May, 1880, Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor died at his residence, 15, St. James’s Terrace, Regent’s Park, in his seventy-fourth year. He was born on the 11th December, 1806, at Northfleet in Kent, and in 1823 he entered as a student the united hospitals of Guy’s and St. Thomas’s, and became the pupil of Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Joseph Henry Green. His success as a student and eminence as a professor, lecturer, and author are too well known to require any comment from me on those subjects, but it is not so generally known how much photography was indebted to him at the earliest period of its birth. In 1838 Dr. Taylor published his celebrated work, “The Elements of Medical Jurisprudence,” and in 1840 he published a pamphlet “On the Art of Photogenic Drawing,” in which he advocated the superiority of ammonia nitrate of silver over chloride of silver as a sensitiser, and hyposulphite of lime over hyposulphite of soda as a fixer, and the latter he advocated up to the year of his death, as the following letter will show:—

“St. James’s Terrace, February 10th, 1880.

“Mr. Werge.

“Dear Sir,—I have great pleasure in sending you for the purpose of your lecture some of my now ancient photographs. They show the early struggles which we had to make. The mounted drawings were all made with the ammonia nitrate of silver; I send samples of the paper used. In general the paper selected contained chloride enough to form ammonia chloride. I send samples of unused paper, procured in 1839—some salted afterwards.

“All these drawings (which are dated) have been preserved by the hyposulphite of lime (not soda). The hypo of lime does not form a definite compound with silver, like soda; hence it is easily washed away, and this is why the drawings are tolerably preserved after forty years. All are on plain paper. Ammonia nitrate does not answer well on albumenized paper. The art of toning by gold was not known in those ancient days, but the faded drawings on plain paper, as you will see, admit of restoration, in dark purple, by placing them in a very dilute solution of chloride of gold, and putting them in the dark for twenty-four hours. The gold replaces the reduced silver and sulphide of silver. I send you the only copy I have of my photogenic drawing. Five hundred were printed, and all were sold or given away. Please take care of it. The loose photographs in red tape are scenes in Egypt and Greece, taken about 1850 from wax-paper negatives (camera views) made by Mr. D. Colnaghi, now English Consul at Florence. If you can call here I shall be glad to say more to you on the matter.—Yours truly,

“Alfred S. Taylor.”

The above was the last of many letters on photographic matters that I had received from Dr. Taylor, and the last time I had the pleasure of seeing him was when I returned the photographs and pamphlet alluded to therein, only a short time before his death. Dr. Taylor never lost his interest in photography, and was always both willing and pleased to enter into conversation on the subject. He had worked at photography through all its changes, despite his many professional engagements, from its dawn in 1839, right up to the introduction of gelatino-bromide dry plates, and in 1879 he came and sat to me for his portrait on one of what he called “these wonderful dry plates,” and watched the process of development with as much interest as any enthusiastic tyro would have done, and I am proud to say that I had the pleasure of taking the portrait and exhibiting the process of development of the latest aspect of photography to one of its most enthusiastic and talented pioneers.

Dr. Taylor was a man of remarkable energy and versatility. He was a prolific writer and an admirable artist. On his walls were numerous beautiful drawings, and his windows were filled with charmingly illusive transparencies, all the work of his own hands; and once, when expressing my wonder that he could find time to do so many things, he remarked that “a man could always find time to do anything he wished if his heart was with his work.” Doubtless it is so, and his life and what he did in it were proofs of the truth and wisdom of his observation.

Hydroquinone as a developer was introduced this year by Eder and Toth, but it did not make much progress at first. It is more in use now, but I do not consider it equal to oxalate of iron.

A considerable fillip was, this year, given to printing on gelatino-bromide paper by the issue of “The Argentic Gelatino-Bromide Worker’s Guide,” published by W. T. Morgan and Co. The work was written by John Burgess, who made and sold a bromide emulsion some years before, and it contained some excellent working instructions. In the book is a modification and simplification of J. M. Burgess’s Eburneum Process, though that process was the invention of Mr. J. Burgess, of Norwich; but a recent application of the gelatino-bromide emulsion to celluloid slabs by Mr. Fitch has made the Ivorytype process as simple and certain as the exposure and development of gelatino-bromide paper.

On January 30th, 1881, died Mr. J. R. Johnson, of pantascopic celebrity. Mr. Johnson was the inventor of many useful things, both photographic and otherwise. He was the chief promoter of the Autotype Company, in which the late Mr. Winsor was so deeply interested; and his double transfer process, published in 1869, contributed greatly to the successful development and practice of the Carbon process. The invention of the Pantascopic Camera, and what he did to forward the formation of the Autotype Company and simplify carbon printing, may be considered the sum total of his claim to photographic recognition.

The chief photographic novelty of 1881 was Mr. Woodbury’s Stannotype process, a modification and simplification of what is best known as the Woodburytype. Instead of forcing the gelatine relief into a block of type-metal by immense pressure to make the matrix, he “faced” a reversed relief with tin-foil, thus obtaining a printing matrix in less time and at less expense. I have seen some very beautiful examples of this process, but somehow or other it is not much employed.

The man who unquestionably made the first photographic portrait died on the 4th of January, 1882, and I think it is impossible for me to notice that event without giving a brief description of the circumstance, even though I incur the risk of telling to some of my readers a tale twice told. When Daguerre’s success was first announced in the Academy of Science in 1839, M. Arago stated that Daguerre had not yet succeeded in taking portraits, but that he hoped to do so soon. The details of the process were not published until July, and in the autumn of that year Dr. Draper succeeded in obtaining a portrait of his assistant, and that was the first likeness of a human being ever known to have been secured by photography. It would be interesting to know if that Daguerreotype is in existence now. Dr. Draper was Professor of Chemistry in the University of New York, and as soon as the news of the discovery reached New York he fitted an ordinary spectacle lens into a cigar case, and commenced his experiments first by taking views out of a window, and afterwards by taking portraits. To shorten the time of exposure for the latter, he whitened the faces of his sitters. In April, 1840, Dr. Draper and Professor Morse opened a portrait gallery on the top of the University Buildings, New York, and did a splendid business among the very best people of the City at the minimum price of five dollars a portrait, and they would be very small even at that price.

One more of the early workers in photography died this year on the 4th of March. Louis Alphonse Poitevin was not a father of photography in a creative sense, but, like Walter Woodbury, an appropriater of photography in furthering the development of photo-mechanical printing. His first effort in that direction was to obtain copper plates, or moulds, from Daguerreotype pictures by the aid of electrical deposits, and he discovered a method of photo-chemical engraving, for which he was awarded a silver medal by the Société d‘Encouragement des Arts, but the process was of no practical value. His chief and most valuable experiments were with gelatine and bichromates, and his labours in that direction were rewarded by the receipt of a considerable portion of the Duc de Luynes’s prize for permanent photographic printing processes, which consisted of photo-lithography and Collotype printing. Born in 1819, he was sixty-three years old when he died.

A useful addition to the pyrogallic acid developer was this year given by Mr. Herbert B. Berkeley. Hitherto, nearly all pyro-developed gelatine plates were stained a deep yellow colour by the action of ammonia, but the use of sulphite of soda, as suggested by Mr. Berkeley, considerably lessened this evil.

In 1883, Captain Abney rendered a signal service to the members of the Photographic Society, and photographers in general, by publishing in the Journal of the Society a translation of Captain Pizzighelli and Baron A. Hubl’s booklet on platinotype. After giving a résumé of the early experiments with platinum by Herschel, Hunt, and others, the theory and practice of platinotype printing are clearly explained, and it was undoubtedly due to the publication of this translation that platinotype printing was very much popularised. In proof of the accuracy of this opinion, every following photographic exhibition showed an increasing number of exhibits in platinotype.

No great novelty was brought into the world of photography in 1884, but there were signs of a steady advance, and an increasing number of workers with dry plates. I should not, however, neglect allusion to the publication of Dr. H. W. Vogel’s experiments with eosine, cyanocine, and other kindred bodies by which he increased the sensitiveness of both wet collodion and gelatine plates to the action of the yellow rays considerably (vide Journal of Society, May 30th). The Berlin Society for the Advancement of Photography acquired and published these experiments for the general good, and yet Tailfer and Clayton obtained patent right monopolies for making eosine gelatine plates in France, Austria, and England. This proceeding seems very much akin to the sharp practice displayed by Mr. Beard in securing a patent right monopoly in the Daguerreotype process which was given to the world by the French Government in 1839. Germany very properly refused to grant a patent under these circumstances.

On April 14th, 1885, Mr. Walter Bird read a paper at the meeting of the Photographic Society of Great Britain, “On the Photographic Reproductions of Pictures in the National Gallery,” by A. Braun et Cie. I was present, and it appeared to me that the “effects” in some of the pictures exhibited were not produced by any chemical mode of translation of colour, but by some method of after-treatment of the negative which was more likely to be by skilled labour than by any chemical process. This belief induced me to read a paper at the next meeting—May 12th—“On the After-Treatment of Negatives,” in which I showed what could be done both by chemical means and art-labour to assist photography in translating the monographic effects of colour more in accordance with the scale of luminosity adopted and adhered to by the most eminent engravers both in line and mezzotint.

At the next meeting—June 9th—Mr. J. R. Sawyer reopened the discussion on the above subject by reading a paper and exhibiting examples of his own experiments, and Mr. Sawyer admitted that he was “bound to confess that while every effort should be made to discover chemical combinations which will give the utmost value that can be practicably obtained in the reproduction (?) of colours, yet that, in all probability, art—and art not inferior to that of a competent engraver—will be necessary to assist photography in rendering the very subtle combinations of colour that present themselves in a fine painting;” and Colonel H. Stuart Wortley proved that the copy of Turner’s “Old Téméraire” was not only “retouched,” but wrongly translated, as the various shades of yellow in the original picture were represented in the copy as if they had been all of the same tint. Mr. Sawyer made use of the phrase “reproduction of colours,” but that was an error. He should have said—and undoubtedly meant—translation of colours, for photography is, unfortunately, incapable of reproducing colours. Among Mr. Sawyer’s examples was a curious and contradictory evidence that isochromatic plates translated yellow tints better than ordinary bromide plates, yet wrongly, for three different shades of yellow were translated as if they had been all one tint. I had noticed this myself when copying paintings and coloured prints, but in photographing the natural colours of fruits and flowers the result was different, and I attributed the mal-translation of pigment yellows to the amount of white with which they had been mixed by the painter. Be that as it may, I always obtained the best translation from natural colours, and a group of flowers which contained a beautiful sulphur coloured dahlia illustrates and confirms this statement in a most remarkable and satisfactory manner. It is, therefore, the more to be regretted that there is any restriction placed upon the individual experiment and development of this interesting aspect of photography.

This was the year of The International Inventions Exhibition, and the photographic feature of which was the historical collection exhibited by some of the members of the Photographic Society of Great Britain, and I think that collection was sufficiently interesting to justify my giving, in these pages, the entire list as published in the Photographic Journal:—

“We subjoin a full and complete statement of the whole of the exhibits, with the names of the contributors:—

“Capt. Abney, R.E., F.R.S.—Papyrotype process, executed at the School of Military Engineering, Chatham.

“W. Andrews—Wet collodion negatives, intensified by the Schlippes salt method.

“T. and R. Annan—Calotype process (negative and print), taken by D. O. Hill.

“F. Beasley, jun.—Collodio-albumen negatives.

“W. Bedford—One of Archer’s first cameras for collodion process, stereoscopic arrangement by Archer to fit a larger camera.

“Valentine Blanchard—Instantaneous views, wet collodion, 1856-65. Illustrations of a method of enlargement, as proposed by V. Blanchard, 1873. Modification of the Brewster stereoscope by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

“Bullock (Bros.)—Photo-lithography, 1866 (Bullock’s patent).

“T. Bolas, F.C.S.—Detective camera, 1876. Negative photograph on bitumen, made insoluble by the action of light. Carbon negatives stripped by Wenderoth’s process.

“E. Clifton—Portrait of Daguerre. Crystallotype by J. R. Whipple, 1854. Specimens from “Pretsch” photo-galvano-graphic plates, 1856.

“T. S. Davis, F.C.S.—A combined preparation and wash bottle for gelatine emulsion. Adjustable gauge for cutting photographic glasses.

“De la Rue and Co.—Surface printing from blocks executed by Paul Pretsch, 1860.

“W. England—Old Daguerreotype developing box. Old ditto sensitising box. Old camera, 1860, with rapid inside shutter. Instantaneous views in Paris, wet collodion, 1856-65.

“Edinburgh Photographic Society—Archer’s water lens.

“James Glaisher, F.R.S.—Nature printing, taken over thirty years ago.

“G. Fowler Jones—Prints from negatives by Le Gray’s ceroline process.

“R. Kennett—Skaife’s pistolgraph. Globe lens.

“Dr. Maddox—Some of the earliest gelatino-bromide negatives, by the originator of the process, 1871.

“Mudd and Son—Collodio-albumen negatives.

“R. C. Murray—Early Talbotype photographs, 1844-45.

“H. Neville—Camera with Sutton’s patent panoramic lens.

“Mrs. H. Baden Pritchard—Impressions from pewter plates of heliographic drawing, by Nicéphore Niépce, 1827. Original letter, by Nicéphore Niépce, sent to the Royal Society, 1827. View of Kew, taken by Nicéphore Niépce, 1827.

“H. P. Robinson—Heliographic picture, by Nicéphore Niépce, 1826. Photo-etched plate (from a print), by Niépce in 1827. Heliograph (from a print), by Niépce, 1827. One of the earliest printing-frames, made for Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawing, 1839. The first nitrate of silver bath used by Scott Archer in his discovery of the collodion process, 1850.

“Ross and Co.—One of Archer’s earliest fluid lenses. The first photographic compound portrait lens, made by Andrew Ross, 1841. Photographic camera, believed to be the first made in England.

“Sands and Hunter—Old lens, with adjustable diaphragm, by Archer, 1851. Old stereoscopic camera, with mechanical arrangement for transferring plates to and from the dark slide.

“T. L. Scowen—Parallel bar stereoscopic camera. Latimer Clarke.

“John Spiller, F.C.S., F.I.C.—The first preserved plates (three to twenty-one days), 1854. Illustrations of the French Pigeon Post.

“J. W. Swan, F.C.S.—Electro intaglios from carbon reliefs (Thorwalsden’s “Night and Morning”). Photo-mezzotints were taken from these in gelatinous inks, 1860, by J. W. Swan, by the process now known as Woodburytype. Plaster cast from a carbon print of Kenilworth, showing the relief, taken in 1864, by J. W. Swan. Carbon prints twenty years old (photographed and printed in various colours by J. W. Swan). Old print (in red) by T. and R. Annan, by Swan’s process. Carbon print, twenty years old (printed in 1864) by double transfer.

“B. B. Turner—Talbotype. Negatives and prints from same. Single lens made by Andrew Ross, 1851.

“J. Werge—Examples of printing with various metals on plain paper, 1839-42. The Fathers of Photography. Examples and dates of the introduction of early photographs. Daguerreotype, 1839. Collodion positive, 1851. Ambrotype, 1853. Ferrotype, 1855.

“W. Willis, Jun.—Specimen of aniline process. Historical illustrations of the development of the platinotype process.

“W. B. Woodbury—Photo-relief printing process. Woodbury mould and Woodburytype print from same, 1866. Stannotype printing-press, with mould. Machine for measuring reliefs. Woodbury lantern slides. Early Daguerreotype on copper. Positive photograph on glass. Woodbury balloon camera. Microscopical objects in plaster from gelatine reliefs. Woodbury collographic process. Woodbury photo-chromograph system, coloured from the back, 1869. Woodbury actinometer. Despatch-box camera. Watermark or photo-filigrain process. Transparency on gelatine. The first specimen of Woodbury printing exhibited, including the first mould printed from, and also proofs backed with luminous paint.

“Colonel H. Stuart Wortley—Early photo-zincographs, 1861-2. Experimental prints with uranium collodion, 1867 (modification of Wothly’s process). Set of apparatus complete for making gelatine emulsion, and preparing gelatine plates, 1877-8. No. 1. Apparatus for cutting gelatine plates either by hand-turning or treadle. No. 2. Stove for keeping emulsion warm for any time at a fixed temperature in pure air, and for the final drying of the plates. No. 3. Apparatus for squeezing emulsion out into water. No. 4. Apparatus for mixing emulsion. Instantaneous shutter, with horizontal motion by finger or pneumatic tube; adjustable wings for cutting off sky, and varying length of exposure.”

It is a very remarkable circumstance that none of the contributors to that historical collection could include among their interesting exhibits portraits of either Nicéphore Niépce or Frederick Scott Archer. Among my “Fathers of Photography” were portraits of Daguerre, Rev. J. B. Reade, Fox Talbot, Dr. Alfred Swaine Taylor, and Sir John Herschel. It was suggested that those historical exhibits should be left at the close of the exhibition to form a nucleus to a permanent photographic exhibition in Kensington Museum. I readily contributed my exhibits towards such a laudable object. They were accepted, and these exhibits may be seen at any time in the West Gallery of the Science Department of the South Kensington Museum.

At the exhibition of the Photographic Society of Great Britain this year, I exhibited “Wollaston’s Diaphragmatic Shutter,” in my opinion the best snap shutter that ever was invented, but it had two very serious drawbacks, for it was both heavy and expensive.