GUARBASSI'S PROCESS (1867).
The paper is floated in the dark for four or five minutes on a saturated solution of bichromate of potash. When dry, it is printed a little longer than for silver prints and afterwards floated, face upwards, on a water bath until all the unaltered bichromate is dissolved. It is then immersed in the following solution, which improve by use and tones the pictures to a reddish color:
| Saturated solution nitrate of mercury, as free from acid as possible | 4 parts |
| Saturated solution bichromate of potash | 1 part |
| Distilled water | 28 parts |
This solution should be prepared, filtered and allowed to stand for some time before use. The print is left in the bath until it has assumed an intense red color, the whites remaining perfectly pure. It is then washed and put in another bath to obtain a brownish tint. This bath is thus composed:
| Conc. aqueous ammonia | 2 parts |
| Distilled water | 100 parts |
The print must be immersed at once, and when, in a short time, it has assumed the proper color, it should be washed immediately.
The picture is toned in a very diluted solution of chloride of gold, 1:7,000, in which the color passes from a light brown to a deep black or a violet black tone, when it is washed in two changes of water.
A. POITEVIN'S PROCESS (1870).
“I use a paper prepared with iron sesquioxide rendered sensitive to light by tartaric or, better, citric acid in concentrated solution. This paper, after desiccation and exposure to light, possesses the property of reducing the solution of silver nitrate and that of chloride of gold, and of turning blue with a solution of potassium ferncyanate in the parts where light [pg 121] has reduced the iron sesquichloride into the oxide at the minimum.”
“To coat the paper with an equal layer of iron sesqnioxide, I brush it with a tuft of fine linen dipped in a solution of iron perchloride at 10 or 12 per cent. of water, and dry the sheets in the dark. I immerse afterwards these sheets, one after the other, in a tray containing aqueous ammonia, in such a manner as to well wet each sheet successively. A sufficient number of sheets being immersed, I pour off the ammonia in a vial, and, in the tray, I wash them several times, and remove them one by one to hang them up to dry, even in full light, the iron sesquioxide not being sensitive to light.”