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.