The Evolution of Photography

December, 1870, was marked by the death of one of the eminent pioneers of photography. On the 12th, the Rev. J. B. Reade passed away at Bishopsbourne Rectory, Canterbury, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. I have already, I think, established Mr. Reade’s claim to the honour of being the first to produce a photographic negative on paper developed with gallic acid, and I regret that I am unable to trace the existence of those two negatives alluded to in Mr. Reade’s published letter. Mr. Reade told me himself that he gave those two historic negatives to Dr. Diamond, when Secretary to the Photographic Society, to be lodged with that body for safety, proof, and reference; but they are not now in the possession of the Photographic Society, and what became of them no one knows. Several years ago I caused enquiries to be made, and Dr. Diamond was written to by Mr. H. Baden Pritchard, then Secretary, but Dr. Diamond’s reply was to the effect that he had no recollection of them, and that Mr. Reade was given to hallucinations. Considering the positions that Mr. Reade held, both in the world and various learned and scientific societies, I don’t think that he could ever have been afflicted with such a mental weakness. He was a clergyman in the Church of England, an amateur astronomer and microscopist, one of the fathers of photography, and a member of Council of the Photographic Society, and President of the Microscopical Society at the time of his death. I had many a conversation with him years ago, and I never detected either weakness or wandering in his mind; therefore I could not doubt the truth of his statement relative to the custodianship of the first paper negative that was taken through the lens of a solar microscope. Mr. Reade was a kind and affable man; and, though a great sufferer on his last bed of sickness, he wrote loving, grateful, and Christian like letters to many of his friends, some of which I have seen, and I have photographed his signature to one of them to attach to his portrait, which I happily possess.

In 1871 the coming revolution in photography was faintly heralded by Dr. R. L. Maddox, publishing in the British Journal of Photography, “An Experiment with Gelatino-Bromide.” Successful as the experiment was it did not lead to any extensive adoption of the process at the time, but it did most unquestionably exhibit the capabilities of gelatino-bromide.

As that communication to the British Journal of Photography contained and first made public the working details of a process that was destined to supersede collodion, I will here insert a copy of Dr. Maddox’s letter in extenso.

“An Experiment with Gelatino-Bromide

“The collodio-bromide processes have for some time held a considerable place in the pages of the British Journal of Photography, and obtained such a prominent chance of being eventually the process of the day in the dry way, that a few remarks upon the application of another medium may perhaps not be uninteresting to the readers of the journal, though little more can be stated than the result of somewhat careless experiments tried at first on an exceedingly dull afternoon. It is not for a moment supposed to be new, for the chances of novelty in photography are small, seeing the legion of ardent workers, and the ground already trodden by its devotees, so that for outsiders little remains except to take the result of labours so industriously and largely circulated through these pages, and be thankful.

“Gelatine, which forms the medium of so many printing processes, and which doubtless is yet to form the base of many more, was tried in the place of collodion in this manner:—Thirty grains of Nelson’s gelatine were washed in cold water, then left to swell for several hours, when all the water was poured off, and the gelatine set in a wide-mouthed bottle, with the addition of four drachms of pure water, and two small drops of aqua regia, and then placed in a basin of hot water for solution. Eight grains of bromide of cadmium dissolved in half a drachm of pure water were now added, and the solution stirred gently. Fifteen grains of nitrate of silver were next dissolved in half a drachm of water in a test tube, and the whole taken into the dark room, when the latter was added to the former slowly, stirring the mixture the whole time. This gave a fine milky emulsion, and was left for a little while to settle. A few plates of glass well cleaned were next levelled on a metal plate put over a small lamp; they were, when fully warmed, coated by the emulsion spread to the edges by a glass rod, then returned to their places, and left to dry. When dry, the plates had a thin opalescent appearance, and the deposit of bromide seemed to be very evenly spread in the substance of the substratum.

“These plates were printed from, in succession, from different negatives, one of which had been taken years since on albumen with oxgall and diluted phosphoric acid, sensitised in an acid nitrate, and developed with pyrogallic acid, furnishing a beautiful warm brown tint.

“The exposure varied from the first plate thirty seconds to a minute and a half, as the light was very poor. No vestige of an outline appeared on removal from the printing-frame. The plates were dipped in water to the surface, and over them was poured a plain solution of pyrogallic acid, four grains to the ounce of water. Soon a faint but clean image was seen, which gradually intensified up to a certain point, then browned all over; hence, the development in the others was stopped at an early stage, the plate washed, and the development continued with fresh pyro, with one drop of a ten-grain solution of nitrate of silver, then re-washed and cleared by a solution of hyposulphite of soda.

“The resulting tints were very delicate in detail, of a colour varying between a bistre and olive tint, and after washing dried with a brilliant surface. The colour of the print varied greatly according to the exposure. From the colour and delicacy it struck me that with care to strain the gelatine, or use only the clearest portion, such a process might be utilised for transparencies for the lantern, and the sensitive plates be readily prepared.

“Some plates were fumed with ammonia; these fogged under the pyro solution. The proportions set down were only taken at random, and are certainly not as sensitive as might be procured under trials. The remaining emulsion was left shut up in a box in the dark room, and tried on the third day after preparation; but the sensibility had, it seems, greatly diminished, though the emulsion, when rendered fluid by gently warming, appeared creamy, and the bromide thoroughly suspended. Some of this was now applied to some pieces of paper by means of a glass rod, and hung up to surface dry, then dried fully on the warmed level plate, and treated as sensitised paper.

“One kind of paper, that evidently was largely adulterated by some earthy base, dried without any brilliancy, but gave, under exposure of a negative for thirty seconds, very nicely toned prints when developed with a weak solution of pyro. Some old albumenized paper of Marion’s was tried, the emulsion being poured both on the albumen side, and, in other pieces, on the plain side; but the salting evidently greatly interfered, the resulting prints being dirty-looking and greyed all over.

“These papers, fumed with ammonia, turned grey under development. They printed very slowly, even in strong sunlight, and were none of them left long enough to develop into a full print. After washing they were cleared by weak hypo solution. It is very possible the iron developer may be employed for the glass prints, provided the acidification does not render the gelatine soft under a development.

“The slowness may depend in part on the proportions of bromide and nitrate not being correctly balanced, especially as the ordinary, not the anhydrous, bromide was used, and on the quantities being too small for the proportion of gelatine. Whether the plates would be more sensitive if used when only surface dry is a question of experiment; also, whether other bromides than the one tried may not prove more advantageous in the presence of the neutral salt resulting from the decomposition, or the omission or decrease of the quantity of aqua regia. Very probably also the development by gallic acid and acetate of lead developer may furnish better results than the plain pyro.

“As there will be no chance of my being able to continue these experiments, they are placed in their crude state before the readers of the Journal, and may eventually receive correction and improvement under abler hands. So far as can be judged, the process seems quite worth more carefully conducted experiments, and, if found advantageous, adds another handle to the photographer’s wheel.

R. L. Maddox, M.D.”

After perusing the above, it will be evident to any one that Dr. Maddox very nearly arrived at perfection in his early experiments. The slowness that he complains of was caused entirely by not washing the emulsion to discharge the excess of bromide, and the want of density was due to the absence of a restrainer and ammonia in the developer. He only made positive prints from negatives; but the same emulsion, had it been washed, would have made negatives in the camera in much less time. Thus, it will be seen, that Dr. Maddox, like the Rev. J. B. Reade, threw the ball, and others caught it; for the gelatine process, as given by Dr. Maddox, is only modified, not altered, by the numerous dry plate and gelatino-bromide paper manufacturers of to-day.

Meanwhile collodion held the field, and many practical men thought it would never be superseded.

In this year Sir John Herschel died at a ripe old age, seventy-nine. Photographers should revere his memory, for it was he who made photography practical by publishing his observation that hyposulphite of soda possessed the power of dissolving chloride and other salts of silver.

FOURTH PERIOD. GELATINE

Dr. R. L. MADDOX.

From Photograph by J. Thomson.

GELATINO-BROMIDE EMULSION 1871.

R. KENNETT.

From Photograph by J. Werge, 1887.

GELATINO-BROMIDE PELLICLE 1873

DRY PLATES 1874

FOURTH PERIOD

GELATINE SUCCESSFUL

In 1873, Mr. J. Burgess, of Peckham, London, advertised his gelatino-bromide emulsion, but as it would not keep in consequence of decomposition setting in speedily, it was not commercial, and therefore unsuccessful. It evidently required the addition of some preservative, or antiseptic, to keep it in a workable condition, and Mr. J. Traill Taylor, editor of the British Journal of Photography, made some experiments in that direction by adding various essential oils; but Mr. Gray—afterwards the well-known dry plate maker—was most successful in preserving the gelatine emulsion from decomposition by the addition of a little oil of peppermint, but it was not the emulsion form of gelatino-bromide of silver that was destined to secure its universal adoption and success.

At a meeting of the South London Photographic Society, held in the large room of the Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi, Mr. Burgess endeavoured to account for his emulsion decomposing, but he did not suggest a remedy, so the process ceased to attract further attention. Mr. Kennett was present, and it was probably Mr. Burgess’s failure with emulsion that induced him to make his experiments with a sensitive pellicle. Be that as it may, Mr. Kennett did succeed in making a workable gelatino-bromide pellicle, and obtained a patent for it on the 20th of November, 1873. I procured some, and tried it at once. It gave excellent results, but preparing the plates was a messy and sticky operation, which I feared would be prejudicial to its usefulness and success. This I reported to Mr. Kennett immediately, and found that his own experience corroborated mine, for he had already received numerous complaints of this objection, while others failed through misapprehension of his instruction; and very comical were some of these misinterpretations. One attempted to coat the plates with the end of the stirring-rod, while another set them to drain in a rack, and those that did succeed in coating the plates properly, invariably spoiled them by over-exposure or in development. He was overwhelmed with correspondence and visitors, and to lessen his troubles I strongly advised him to prepare the plates himself, and sell them in that form ready for use. He took my advice, and in March, 1874, issued his first batch of gelatino-bromide dry plates; but even that did not remove his vexation of spirit, nor lessen his troublesome correspondence. Most of his clients were sceptical, and exposed the plates too long, or worked under wet-plate conditions in their dark rooms, and fog and failure were the natural consequences. Most, if not all, of his clients at that time were amateurs, and it was not until years after, that professional photographers adopted the dry and abandoned the wet process. In fact, it is doubtful if the profession ever tried Mr. Kennett’s dry plates at all, for it was not until J. W. Swan and Wratten and Wainwright issued their dry plates, that I could induce any professional photographer to give these new plates a trial, and I have a very vivid recollection of the scepticism and conservatism exhibited by the most eminent photographers on the first introduction of gelatino-bromide dry plates.

For example, when I called upon Messrs. Elliott and Fry to introduce to their notice these rapid plates, I saw Mr. Fry, and told him how rapid they were. He was incredulous, and smilingly informed me that I was an enthusiast. It was a dull November morning, 1878, and I challenged him, not to fight, but to give me an opportunity of producing as good a picture in quarter the time they were giving in the studio, no matter what that time was. This rather astonished him, and he invited me up to the studio to prove my statement. I ascertained that they were giving ninety seconds—a minute and a half!—on a wet collodion plate, 10 by 8. I knew their size, and had it with me, as well as the developer. Mr. Fry stood and told the operator, Mr. Benares, to take the time from me. Looking at the quality of the light, I gave twenty seconds, but Mr. Benares was disposed to be incredulous also, and, after counting twenty, went on with “one for the plate, and one more for Mr. Werge,” but I told him to stop, or I would have nothing more to do with the business. The plate had twenty-two or three seconds’ exposure, and when I developed in their dark room, it was just those two or three seconds over-exposed. Nevertheless, Mr. Fry brought me a print from that negative in a few days, and acknowledged that it was one of the finest negatives he had ever seen. They were convinced, and adopted the new dry plates immediately. But it was not so with all, for many of the most prominent photographers would not at first have anything to do with gelatine plates, and remained quite satisfied with collodion; but the time came when they were glad to change their opinion, and give up the wet for the dry plates; but it was a long time, for Mr. Kennett introduced his dry plates in 1874, and it was not until 1879 and 1880 that professional photographers had adopted and taken kindly to gelatine plates generally.

With amateurs it was very different, and many of their exhibits in the various exhibitions were from gelatine negatives obtained upon plates prepared by themselves, or commercial makers. In the London Photographic Society’s exhibition of 1874, and following, several prints from gelatine negatives were exhibited, and in 1879 they were pretty general. Among the many exhibited that year was Mr. Gale’s swallow-picture, which created at the time a great deal of interest and controversy, and Mr. Gale was invited over and over again to acknowledge whether the appearance of the bird was the result of skill, accident, or “trickery;” but I don’t think that he ever gratified anyone’s curiosity on the subject. I can, however, state very confidently that he was innocent of any “trickery” in introducing the bird by double printing, for the late Mr. Dudley Radcliffe told me at the time that he (Mr. Radcliffe) not only prepared the plate, but developed the negative, and was surprised to see the bird there. This may have been the reason why Mr. Gale was so reticent on the subject; but I am anticipating, and must go back to preserve my plan of chronological progression.

In 1875 a considerable impetus was given to carbon printing, both for small work and enlarging by the introduction of the Lambertype process. Similar work had been done before, but, as Mr. Leon Lambert used to say, he made it “facile”; and he certainly did so, and induced many photographers to adopt his beautiful, but troublesome, chromotype process. There were two Lamberts in the tent—one a very clever manipulator, the other a clever advertiser—and between the two they managed to sell a great many licences, and carry away a considerable sum of money. I was intimate with them both while they remained in England, and they were both pleasant and honourable men.

On January 18th, 1875, O. G. Rejlander died, much to the regret of all who took an interest in the art phase of photography. Rejlander has himself told us how, when, and where he first fell in love with photography. In 1851 he was not impressed with the Daguerreotypes at the great exhibition, nor with “reddish landscape photographs” that he saw in Regent Street; but when in Rome, in 1852, he was struck with the beauty of some photographs of statuary, which he bought and studied, and made up his mind to study photography as soon as he returned to England. How he did that will be best told by himself:—“In 1853, having inquired in London for the best teacher, I was directed to Henneman. We agreed for so much for three or five lessons; but, as I was in a hurry to get back to the country, I took all the lessons in one afternoon! Three hours in the calotype and waxed-paper process, and half-an-hour sufficed for the collodion process!! He spoke, I wrote; but I was too clever. It would have saved me a year or more of trouble and expense had I attended carefully to the rudiments of the art for a month.” His first attempt at “double printing” was exhibited in London in 1855, and was named in the catalogue, group printed from three negatives. Again, I must allow Mr. Rejlander to describe his reasons for persevering in the art of “double printing”:—“I had taken a group of two. They were expressive and composed well. The light was good, and the chemistry of it successful. A very good artist was staying in the neighbourhood, engaged on some commission. He called; saw the picture; was very much delighted with it, and so was I. Before he left my house he looked at the picture again, and said it was ‘marvellous,’ but added, ‘Now, if I had drawn that, I should have introduced another figure between them, or some light object, to keep them together. You see, there is where you photographers are at fault. Good morning!’ I snapped my fingers after he left—but not at him—and exclaimed aloud, ‘I can do it!’ Two days afterwards I called at my artist-friend’s hotel as proud as—anybody. He looked at my picture and at me, and took snuff twice. He said, ‘This is another picture.’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘it is the same, except with the addition you suggested.’ ‘Never,’ he exclaimed; ‘and how is it possible? You should patent that!’” Rejlander was too much of an artist to take anything to the Patent Office.

When I first saw his celebrated composition picture, “The Two Ways of Life,” in the Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester in 1857, I wondered how he could have got so many men and women to become models, and be able to sit or stand in such varied and strained positions for the length of time then required by the wet collodion process; but my wonder ceased when I became acquainted with him in after years, and ascertained that he had the command of a celebrated troupe, who gave tableaux vivants representations of statues and groups from paintings under the direction and name of “Madame Wharton’s pose plastique troupe.” What became of the original “Two Ways of Life” I do not know, but the late Henry Greenwood possessed it at the time of Rejlander’s death, for I remember endeavouring to induce Mr. Greenwood to allow it to be offered as a bait to the highest contributor to the Rejlander fund; but Mr. Greenwood’s characteristic reply was, “Take my purse, but leave me my ‘Two Ways of Life.’” Mr. Rejlander kindly gave me a reduced copy of his “Two Ways of Life,” and many other examples of his works, both in the nude and semi-nude. Fortunately Rejlander did not confine himself to such productions, but made hundreds of draped studies, both comic and serious, such as “Ginx’s Baby,” “Did She?,” “Beyond the Bible,” and “Homeless.” Where are they all now? I fear most of them have faded away, for Rejlander was a somewhat careless operator, and he died before the more permanent process of platinum printing was introduced. When Rejlander died, his widow tried to make a living by printing from his negatives, but I fear they soon got scattered. Rejlander was a genial soul and a pleasant companion, and he had many kind friends among members of the Solar Club, as well as other clubs with which he was associated.

There is one more death in this year to be recorded, that of Thomas Sutton, B.A., the founder and for many years editor of Photographic Notes, and the inventor of a panoramic camera of a very clumsy character that bore his name, and that was all. Mr. Sutton was a very clever man with rather warped notions, and in the management of his Photographic Notes he descended to the undignified position of a caricaturist, and published illustrations of an uncomplimentary description, some of which were offensive in the extreme, and created a great deal of irritation in some minds at the time.

In 1877 Carey Lea gave his ferrous-oxalate developer to the world, but it was not welcomed by many English photographers for negative development, though it possessed many advantages over alkaline pyro. It was, however, generally employed by foreign photographers, and is now largely in use by English photographers, especially for the development of bromide paper, either for contact printing or enlargements. In the early part of this year, Messrs. Wratten and Wainwright commenced to make gelatino-bromide dry plates, and during the hot summer months Mr. Wratten found it necessary to precipitate the gelatine emulsion with alcohol. This removed the necessity of dialysing, and helped to lessen the evils of decomposition and “frilling.”

The most noticeable death in the photographic world of this year was that of Henry Fox Talbot. He was born on February the 11th, 1800, and died September 17th, 1877, thus attaining a ripe old age. I am not disposed to deny his claims to the honour of doing a great deal to forward the advancement of photography, but what strikes me very much is the mercenary spirit in which he did it, especially when I consider the position he occupied, and the pecuniary means at his command. In the first place, he rushed to the Patent Office with his gallo-nitrate developer, and then every little improvement or modification that he afterwards made was carefully protected by patent rights. With a churlishness of spirit and narrow-mindedness it is almost impossible to conceive or forgive, he tried his utmost to stop the formation of the London Photographic Society, and it was only after pressing solicitations from Sir Charles Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy, and first President of the London Photographic Society, that he withdrew his objections. The late Peter le Neve Foster, Secretary of the Society of Arts, told me this years after, and when it was proposed to make Fox Talbot an honorary member of the Photographic Society, Mr. Foster was opposed to the proposition. Then the action that he brought against Sylvester Laroche was unjustifiable, for there really was no resemblance between the collodion and calotype means of making a negative, except in the common use of the camera, and the means of making prints was the same as that employed by Thomas Wedgwood, while the fixing process with hyposulphite of soda was first resorted to by the Rev. J. B. Reade, on the published information of Sir John Herschel.

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.