Thanks to Mr. Lanston’s invention we may hope for the day when every parish will be able to do its own printing, or at least set up its own magazine. The only thing needful will be a monotype keyboard supplied by an enlightened Parish Council—as soon as the expense appears justifiable—and kept in the Post Office or Village Institute. The payment of a small fee will entitle the Squire to punch out his speech on behalf of the Conservative Candidate, the Schoolmaster to compose special information for his pupils, the Rector to reduce to print pamphlets and appeals to charity. And if those of humbler degree think they can strike eloquence from the keys, they too will of course be allowed to turn out their ideas literally by the yard.
[PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLOURS.]
While photography was still in its infancy many people believed that, a means having been found of impressing the representation of an object on a sensitised surface, a short time only would have to elapse before the discovery of some method of registering the colours as well as the forms of nature.
Photography has during the last forty years passed through some startling developments, especially as regards speed. Experts, such as M. Marey, have proved the superiority of the camera over the human eye in its power to grasp the various phases of animal motion. Even rifle bullets have been arrested in their lightning flight by the sensitised plate. But while the camera is a valuable aid to the eye in the matter of form, the eye still has the advantage so far as colour is concerned. It is still impossible for a photographer by a simple process similar to that of making an ordinary black-and-white negative, to affect a plate in such a manner that from it prints may be made by a single operation showing objects in their natural colours. Nor, for the matter of that, does colour photography direct from nature seem any nearer attainment now than it was in the time of Daguerre.
There are, however, extant several methods of making colour photographs in an indirect or roundabout way. These various “dodges” are, apart from their beautiful results, so extremely ingenious and interesting that we propose to here examine three of the best known.
The reader must be careful to banish from his mind those coloured photographs so often to be seen in railway carriages and shop windows, which are purely the result of hand-work and mechanical printing, and therefore not colour photographs at all.
Before embarking on an explanation of these three methods it will be necessary to examine briefly the nature of those phenomena on which all are based—light and colour. The two are really identical, light is colour and colour is light.