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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
Whole and fractional parts of numbers are displayed as 4-5/8
for four and five-eights or as a decimal number. Several of
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[Illustration: FIRST PERIOD.
PAPER, ASPHALTUM, &C.
THOMAS WEDGWOOD.
_From a Plaster Cast._
JOSEPH NICEPHORE NIEPCE.
_From a Painting by L. Berger._
Rev. J. B. READE.
_From a Photograph
by Maull & Fox._
HENRY FOX TALBOT.
_From a Calotype._
SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.
_From a Daguerreotype._]
THE EVOLUTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY.
With a Chronological Record of Discoveries, Inventions, Etc.,
Contributions to Photographic Literature, and
Personal Reminiscences Extending over Forty Years.
by
JOHN WERGE.
Illustrated.
London: Piper & Carter, 5, Furnival Street, Holborn, E.C.;
and John Werge, 11A, Berners Street, Oxford Street, W.
1890.
[All Rights Reserved.]
Printed by Piper & Carter, 5, Furnival Street, Holborn, London, E.C.
PREFACE.
No previous history of photography, that I am aware of, has ever assumed
the form of a reminiscence, nor have I met with a photographic work, of
any description, that is so strictly built upon a chronological
foundation as the one now placed in the hands of the reader. I therefore
think, and trust, that it will prove to be an acceptable and readable
addition to photographic literature.
It was never intended that this volume should be a text-book, so I have
not entered into elaborate descriptions of the manipulations of this or
that process, but have endeavoured to make it a comprehensive and
agreeable summary of all that has been done in the past, and yet convey
a perfect knowledge of all the processes as they have appeared and
effected radical changes in the practice of photography.
The chronological record of discoveries, inventions, appliances, and
publications connected with the art will, it is hoped, be received and
considered as a useful and interesting table of reference; while the
reminiscences, extending over forty years of unbroken contact with every
phase of photography, and some of its pioneers, will form a vital link
between the long past and immediate present, which may awaken pleasing
recollections in some, and give encouragement to others to enter the
field of experiment, and endeavour to continue the work of evolution.
At page 10 it is stated, on the authority of the late Robert Hunt, that
some of Niepce's early pictures may be seen at the British Museum. That
was so, but unfortunately it is not so now. On making application, very
recently, to examine these pictures, I ascertained that they were never
placed in the care of the curator of the British Museum, but were the
private property of the late Dr. Robert Brown, who left them to his
colleague, John Joseph Bennett, and that at the latter's death they
passed into the possession of his widow. I wrote to the lady making
enquiries about them, but have not been able to trace them further;
there are, however, two very interesting examples of Niepce's
heliographs, and one photo-etched plate and print, lent by Mr. H. P.
Robinson, on view at South Kensington, in the Western Gallery of the
Science Collection.
For the portrait of Thomas Wedgwood, I am indebted to Mr. Godfrey
Wedgwood; for that of Joseph Nicephore Niepce, to the Mayor of
Chalons-sur-Saone; for the Rev. J. B. Reade's, to Mr. Fox; for Sir John
Herschel's, to Mr. H. H. Cameron; for John Frederick Goddard's, to Dr.
Jabez Hogg; and for Frederick Scott Archer's, to Mr. Alfred Cade; and to
all those gentlemen I tender my most grateful acknowledgments. Also to
the Autotype Company, for their care and attention in carrying out my
wishes in the reproduction of all the illustrations by their beautiful
Collotype Process.
JOHN WERGE.
_London, June, 1890._
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION 1
FIRST PERIOD.
The Dark Ages 3
SECOND PERIOD.
Publicity and Progress 27
THIRD PERIOD.
Collodion Triumphant 58
FOURTH PERIOD.
Gelatine Successful 95
CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD.
Inventions, Discoveries, etc. 126
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHOTOGRAPHIC LITERATURE. 140
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Frontispiece Portrait of Thomas Wedgwood.
" Portrait of Joseph Nicephore Niepce.
" Portrait of Rev. J. B. Reade.
" Portrait of Henry Fox Talbot.
" Portrait of Sir John Herschel.
27 Portrait of L. J. M. Daguerre.
27 Portrait of John Frederick Goddard.
27 Copy of Instantaneous Daguerreotype.
58 Portrait of Frederick Scott Archer.
58 Hever Castle, Kent.
95 Portrait of Dr. R. L. Maddox.
95 Portrait of Richard Kennett.
INDEX.
Archer, Frederick Scott, 58-69
Argentic Gelatino-Bromide Paper, 106
Abney's Translation of Pizzighelli and Hubl's Booklet, 109
A String of Old Beads, 309
Bacon, Roger, 3
Bennett, Charles, 102
Boston, 51
Bromine Accelerator, 29
Bingham, Robert J., 87
Burgess, J., 93
Cabinet Portraits, 84
Camera-Obscura, 3
Chronological Record, 126-139
Convention of 1889, 122
Claudet, A. F. J., 29, 86
Chlorine Accelerator, 29
Collodion Process (Archer's), 68
Collodio-Chloride Printing Process, 81
Davy, Sir H., 9
Daguerre, L. J. M., 9, 43
Daguerreotype Process, 23, 24, 25
---- Apparatus Imported, 29
Diaphanotypes, 71
Dolland, J., 4
Donkin, W. F., 120
Draper, Dr., 107
Dublin Exhibition, 205-226
Eburneum Process, 82
Elliott & Fry, 96
Eosine, &c., 109
Errors in Pictorial Backgrounds, 231
First Photographic Portrait, 107
Fizeau, M., 6, 28
Flash-light Pictures, 118
Gelatino-Bromide Experiments, 91
Globe Lens, 78
Goddard, John Frederick, 28, 79
Harrison, W. H., 87
Heliographic Process, 11, 12, 13
Heliochromy, 88
Herschel, Dr., 6
Herschel, Sir John, 94
Hillotypes, 71
Hughes, Jabez, 55, 75
Hunt, Robert, 117
International Exhibitions, 42, 77, 82, 111
Johnson, J. R., 107
Kennett, R., 96
Lambert, Leon, 98
Laroche, Sylvester, 116
Lea, Carey, 101
"Lux Graphicus" on the Wing, 273-299
Lights and Lighting, 311
Maddox, Dr. R. L., 91
Magic Photographs, 83
Mawson, John, 85
Mayall, J. E., 54
Macbeth, Norman, 120
Montreal, 51
Morgan and Kidd, 106
Newton, Sir Isaac, 3
New York, 48, 71
Niagara, 50
Niepce, J. Nicephore, 9, 11
Niepce de St. Victor, 88
Niagara, Pictures of, 140-158
Notes on Pictures in National Gallery, 245
Orthochromatic Plates, 115
Panoramic Lens and Camera, 76
Pistolgraph, 76
Pensions to Daguerre and Niepce, 33
Philadelphia, 49
Ponton, Mungo, 22, 103
Poitevin, M., 85, 108
Porta, Baptista G., 3
Potash Bichromate, 22
Pouncy Process, 78
Pictures of the St. Lawrence, 158-169
Pinhole Camera, 117
Pizzighelli's Platinum Printing, 118
Pictures of the Potomac, 183-196
Photography in the North, 226-231
Perspective, 237-244
Photography and the Immured Pompeiians, 303
Rambles among Studios, 196-204
Reade, Rev. J. B., 15-22, 90
Rejlander, O. G., 98
Ritter, John Wm., 5
Rumford, Count, 5
Russell, Col., 117
Sable Island, 47
Salomon, Adam, 84
Sawyer, J. R., 121
Scheele, C. W., 4, 5
Senebier, 5
Simpson, George Wharton, 75, 103
Soda Sulphite, 109
Swan's Carbon Process, 80
Stannotype, 107
Sutton, Thomas, 100
Spencer, J. A., 102
Stereoscopic Pictures, 119
Sharpness and Softness _v._ Hardness, 249
Simple Mode of Intensifying Negatives, 307
Talbot, Henry Fox, 14, 101
Talbot versus Laroche, 54
Taylor, Professor Alfred Swaine, 104
The Hudson River, 169-183
The Society's Exhibition, 260
The Use of Clouds in Landscapes, 265
---- as Backgrounds in Portraiture, 269
Union of the North and South London Societies, 253
Vogel, Dr. H. W., 109
Washington, 49
Wedgwood Controversy, 80
Wedgwood, Thomas, 7, 8, 9
Whipple Gallery, 52
Wolcott Reflecting Camera, 28
Wollaston's Diaphragmatic Shutter, 115
Wollaston, Dr., 6
Woodbury Process, 82
Wothlytype Printing Process, 81
INTRODUCTION.
Photography, though young in years, is sufficiently aged to be in danger
of having much of its early history, its infantile gambols, and vigorous
growth, obscured or lost sight of in the glitter and reflection of the
brilliant success which surrounds its maturity. Scarcely has the period
of an average life passed away since the labours of the successful
experimentalists began; yet, how few of the present generation of
workers can lay their fingers on the dates of the birth, christening,
and phases of the delightful vocation they pursue. Many know little or
nothing of the long and weary travail the minds of the discoverers
suffered before their ingenuity gave birth to the beautiful art-science
by which they live. What form the infant art assumed in the earlier
stages of its life; or when, where, and how, it passed from one phase to
another until it arrived at its present state of mature and profitable
perfection. Born with the art, as I may say, and having graduated in it,
I could, if I felt so disposed, give an interesting, if not amusing,
description of its rise and progress, and the many difficulties and
disappointments that some of the early practitioners experienced at a
time when photographic A B C's were not printed; its "principles and
practice" anything but familiarly explained; and when the "dark room"
was as dark as the grave, and as poisonous as a charnel-house, and only
occasionally illumined by the glare of a "bull's-eye." But it is not my
intention to enter the domain of romance, and give highly coloured or
extravagant accounts of the growth of so beautiful and fascinating an
art-science. Photography is sufficiently facetious in itself, and too
versatile in its powers of delineation of scenes and character, to
require any verbose effort of mine to make it attractive. A record of
bare facts is all I aim at. Whatever is doubtful I shall leave to the
imagination of the reader, or the invention of the romance writer. To
arrange in chronological order the various discoveries, inventions, and
improvements that have made photography what it is; to do honour to
those who have toiled and given, or sold, the fruits of their labour for
the advancement of the art; to set at rest, as far as dates can succeed
in doing so, any questionable point or order of precedence of merit in
invention, application, or modification of a process, and to enable the
photographic student to make himself acquainted with the epochs of the
art, is the extent of my ambition in compiling these records.
With the hope of rendering this work readily referable and most
comprehensive, I shall divide it into four periods. The first will deal
broadly and briefly with such facts as can be ascertained that in any
way bear on the accidental discovery, early researches, and ultimate
success of the pioneers of photography.
The second will embrace a fuller description of their successes and
results. The third will be devoted to a consideration of patents and
impediments; and the fourth to the rise and development of photographic
literature and art. A strict chronological arrangement of each period
will be maintained, and it is hoped that the advantages to be derived
from travelling some of the same ground over again in the various
divisions of the subject will fully compensate the reader, and be
accepted as sufficient excuse for any unavoidable repetition that may
appear in the work. With these few remarks I shall at once enter upon
the task of placing before the reader in chronological order the origin,
rise, progress, and development of the science and art of photography.
FIRST PERIOD.
THE DARK AGES.
More than three hundred years have elapsed since the influence and
actinism of light on chloride of silver was observed by the alchemists
of the sixteenth century. This discovery was unquestionably the first
thing that suggested to the minds of succeeding chemists and men of
science the possibility of obtaining pictures of solid bodies on a plane
surface previously coated with a silver salt by means of the sun's rays;
but the alchemists were too much absorbed in their vain endeavours to
convert the base metals into royal ones to seize the hint, and they lost
the opportunity of turning the silver compounds with which they were
acquainted into the mine of wealth it eventually became in the
nineteenth century. Curiously enough, a mechanical invention of the same
period was afterwards employed, with a very trifling modification, for
the production of the earliest sun-pictures. This was the camera-obscura
invented by Roger Bacon in 1297, and improved by a physician in Padua,
Giovanni Baptista Porta, about 1500, and afterwards remodelled by Sir
Isaac Newton.
Two more centuries passed away before another step was taken towards the
revelation of the marvellous fact that Nature possessed within herself
the power to delineate her own beauties, and, as has recently been
proved, that the sun could depict his own terrible majesty with a
rapidity and fidelity the hand of man could never attain. The second
step towards this grand achievement of science was the construction of
the double achromatic combination of lenses by J. Dolland. With single
combinations of lenses, such pictures as we see of ourselves to-day, and
such portraits of the sun as the astronomers obtained during the late
total eclipse, could never have been produced. J. Dolland, the eminent
optician, was born in London 1706, and died 1762; and had he not made
that important improvement in the construction of lenses, the eminent
photographic opticians of the present day might have lived and died
unknown to wealth and fame.
The observations of the celebrated Swedish chemist, Scheele, formed the
next interesting link between the simple and general blackening of a
lump of chloride of silver, and the gradations of blackening which
ultimately produced the photographic picture on a piece of paper
possessing a prepared surface of nitrate of silver and chloride of
sodium in combination. Scheele discovered in 1777 that the blackening of
the silver compound was due to the reducing power of light, and that the
black deposit was _reduced silver_; and it is precisely the same effect
of the action of light upon chloride of silver passing through the
various densities of the negative that produces the beautiful
photographic prints with which we are all familiar at the present time.
Scheele was also the first to discover and make known the fact that
chloride of silver was blackened or reduced to various depths by the
varying action of the prismatic colours. He fixed a glass prism in a
window, allowed the refracted sunbeams to fall on a piece of paper
strewn with _luna cornua_--fused chloride of silver--and saw that the
violet ray was more active than any of the other colours. Anyone, with a
piece of sensitised paper and a prism, or piece of a broken lustre, can
repeat and see for themselves Scheele's interesting discovery; and
anyone that can draw a head or a flower may catch a sunbeam in a small
magnifying glass, and make a drawing on sensitised paper with a pencil,
as long as the sun is distant from the earth. It is the old story of
Columbus and the egg--easy to do when you are shown or told how.
Charles William Scheele was born at Stralsund, Sweden, December 19th,
1742, and died at Koeping, on lake Moeler, May 21st, 1786. He was the
real father of photography, for he produced the first photographic
picture on record without camera and without lens, with the same
chemical compound and the same beautiful and wonderful combination of
natural colours which we now employ. Little did he dream what was to
follow. But photography, like everything else in this world, is a
process of evolution.
Senebier followed up Scheele's experiments with the solar spectrum, and
ascertained that chloride of silver was darkened by the violet ray in
fifteen minutes, while the red rays were sluggish, and required twenty
minutes to produce the same result.
John Wm. Ritter, born at Samitz, in Silesia, corroborated the
experiments of Scheele, and discovered that chloride of silver was
blackened beyond the spectrum on the violet side. He died in 1810; but
he had observed what is now called the fluorescent rays of the
spectrum--invisible rays which unquestionably exert themselves in the
interests and practice of photography.
Many other experiments were made by other chemists and philosophers on
the influence of light on various substances, but none of them had any
direct bearing on the subject under consideration until Count Rumford,
in 1798, communicated to the Royal Society his experiments with chloride
of gold. Count Rumford wetted a piece of taffeta ribbon with a solution
of chloride of gold, held it horizontally over the clear flame of a wax
candle, and saw that the heat decomposed the gold solution, and stained
the ribbon a beautiful purple. Though no revived gold was visible, the
ribbon appeared to be coated with a rich purple enamel, which showed a
metallic lustre of great brilliancy when viewed in the sunlight; but its
photographic value lay in the circumstance of the hint it afterwards
afforded M. Fizeau in applying a solution of chloride of gold, and, by
means of heat, depositing a fine film of metallic gold on the surface of
the Daguerreotype image, thereby increasing the brilliancy and
permanency of that form of photographic picture. A modification of M.
Fizeau's chloride of gold "fixing process" is still used to tone, and
imparts a rich purple colour to photographic prints on plain and
albumenized papers.
In 1800, Dr. Herschel's "Memoirs on the Heating Power of the Solar
Spectrum" were published, and out of his observations on the various
effects of differently coloured darkening glasses arose the idea that
the chemical properties of the prismatic colours, and coloured glass,
might be as different as those which related to heat and light. His
suspicions were ultimately verified, and hence the use of yellow or ruby
glass in the windows of the "dark room," as either of those coloured
glasses admit the luminous ray and restrain the violet or active
photographic ray, and allow all the operations that would otherwise have
to be performed in the dark, to be seen and done in comfort, and without
injury to the sensitive film.
The researches of Dr. Wollaston, in 1802, had very little reference to
photography beyond his examination of the chemical action of the rays of
the spectrum, and his observation that the yellow stain of gum guaiacum
was converted to a green colour in the violet rays, and that the red
rays rapidly destroyed the green tint the violet rays had generated.
1802 is, however, a memorable year in the dark ages of photography, and
the disappointment of those enthusiastic and indefatigable pursuers of
the sunbeam must have been grievous indeed, when, after years of labour,
they found the means of catching shadows as they fell, and discovered
that they could not keep them.
Thomas Wedgwood, son of the celebrated potter, was not only the first
that obtained photographic impressions of objects, but the first to make
the attempt to obtain sun-pictures in the true sense of the word.
Scheele had obtained the first photographic picture of the solar
spectrum, but it was by accident, and while pursuing other chemical
experiments; whereas Wedgwood went to work avowedly to make the sunbeam
his slave, to enlist the sun into the service of art, and to compel the
sun to illustrate art, and to depict nature more faithfully than art had
ever imitated anything illumined by the sun before. How far he succeeded
everyone should know, and no student of photography should ever tire of
reading the first published account of his fascinating pastime or
delightful vocation, if it were but to remind him of the treasures that
surround him, and the value of hyposulphite of soda. What would Thomas
Wedgwood not have given for a handful of that now common commodity?
There is a mournfulness in the sentence relative to the evanescence of
those sun-pictures in the Memoir by Wedgwood and Davy that is peculiarly
impressive and desponding contrasted with our present notions of
instability. We know that sun-pictures will, at the least, last for
years, while they knew that at the most they would endure but for a few
hours. The following extracts from the Memoir published in June, 1802,
will, it is hoped, be found sufficiently interesting and in place here
to justify their insertion.
"White paper, or white leather moistened with solution of nitrate of
silver, undergoes no change when kept in a dark place, but on being
exposed to the daylight it speedily changes colour, and after passing
through different shades of grey and brown becomes at length nearly
black.... In the direct beams of the sun, two or three minutes are
sufficient to produce the full effect, in the shade several hours are
required, and light transmitted through different coloured glasses acts
upon it with different degrees of intensity. Thus it is found that red
rays, or the common sunbeams passed through red glass, have very little
action upon it; yellow and green are more efficacious, but blue and
violet light produce the most decided and powerful effects.... When the
shadow of any figure is thrown upon the prepared surface, the part
concealed by it remains white, and the other parts speedily become dark.
For copying paintings on glass, the solution should be applied on
leather, and in this case it is more readily acted on than when paper is
used. After the colour has been once fixed on the leather or paper, it
cannot be removed by the application of water, or water and soap, and it
is in a high degree permanent. The copy of a painting or the profile,
immediately after being taken, must be kept in an obscure place; it may
indeed be examined in the shade, but in this case the exposure should be
only for a few minutes; by the light of candles or lamps as commonly
employed it is not sensibly affected.
"No attempts that have been made to prevent the uncoloured parts of the
copy or profile from being acted upon by the light have as yet been
successful. They have been covered by a thin coating of fine varnish,
but this has not destroyed their susceptibility of becoming coloured,
and even after repeated washings, sufficient of the active part of the
saline matter will adhere to the white parts of leather or paper to
cause them to become dark when exposed to the rays of the sun....
"The images formed by means of a camera-obscura have been found to be too
faint to produce, in any moderate time, an effect upon the nitrate of
silver. To copy these images was the first object of Mr. Wedgwood, in
his researches on the subject, and for this purpose he first used the
nitrate of silver, which was mentioned to him by a friend, as a
substance very sensible to the influence of light; but all his numerous
experiments as to their primary end proved unsuccessful."
From the foregoing extracts from the first lecture on photography that
ever was delivered or published, it will be seen that those two eminent
philosophers and experimentalists despaired of obtaining pictures in the
camera-obscura, and of rendering the pictures obtained by superposition,
or cast shadows, in any degree permanent, and that they were utterly
ignorant and destitute of any fixing agents. No wonder, then, that all
further attempts to pursue these experiments should, for a time, be
abandoned in England. Although Thomas Wedgwood's discoveries were not
published until 1802, he obtained his first results in 1791, and does
not appear to have made any appreciable advance during the remainder of
his life. He was born in 1771, and died in 1805. Sir Humphry Davy was
born at Penzance 1778, and died at Geneva in 1828, so that neither of
them lived to see the realization of their hopes.
From the time that Wedgwood and Davy relinquished their investigation,
the subject appears to have lain dormant until 1814, when Joseph
Nicephore Niepce, of Chalons-sur-Saone, commenced a series of experiments
with various resins, with the object of securing or retaining in a
permanent state the pictures produced in the camera-obscura, and in
1824, L. J. M. Daguerre turned his attention to the same subject. These
two investigators appear to have carried on their experiments in
different ways, and in total ignorance of the existence and pursuits of
the other, until the year 1826, when they accidentally became acquainted
with each other and the nature of their investigations. Their
introduction and reciprocal admiration did not, however, induce them to
exchange their ideas, or reveal the extent of their success in the
researches on which they were occupied, and which both were pursuing so
secretly and guardedly. They each preserved a marked reticence on the
subject for a considerable time, and it was not until a deed of
partnership was executed between them that they confided their hopes and
fears, their failures with this substance, and their prospects of
success with that; and even after the execution of the deed of
partnership they seem to have jealously withheld as much of their
knowledge as they decently could under the circumstances.
Towards the close of 1827 M. Niepce visited England, and we receive the
first intimation of his success in the production of light-drawn
pictures from a note addressed to Mr. Bauer, of Kew. It is rather
curious and flattering to find that the earliest intimation of the
Frenchman's success is given in England. The note which M. Niepce wrote
to Mr. Bauer is in French, but the following is a translation of the
interesting announcement:--"Kew, 19th November, 1827. Sir,--When I left
France to reside here, I was engaged in researches on the way to retain
the image of objects by the action of light. I have obtained some
results which make me eager to proceed.... Nicephore Niepce." This is
the first recorded announcement of his partial success.
In the following December he communicated with the Royal Society of
London, and showed several pictures on metal plates. Most of these
pictures were specimens of his successful experiments with various
resins, and the subjects were rendered visible to the extent which the
light had assisted in hardening portions of the resin-covered plates.
Some were etchings, and had been subjected to the action of acid after
the design had been impressed by the action of light. Several of these
specimens, I believe, are still extant, and may be seen on application
to the proper official at the British Museum. M. Niepce named these
results of his researches Heliography, and Mr. Robert Hunt gives their
number, and a description of each subject, in his work entitled,
"Researches on Light." M. Niepce met with some disappointment in England
on account of the Royal Society refusing to receive his communication as
a secret, and he returned to France rather hurriedly. In a letter dated
"Chalons-sur-Saone, 1st March, 1828," he says, "We arrived here 26th
February"; and, in a letter written by Daguerre, February 3rd, 1828, we
find that savant consoling his brother experimentalist for his lack of
encouragement in England.
In December, 1829, the two French investigators joined issue by
executing a deed of co-partnery, in which they agreed to prosecute their
researches in future in mutual confidence and for their joint advantage;
but their interchange of thought and experience does not appear to have
been of much value or advantage to the other; for an examination of the
correspondence between MM. Niepce and Daguerre tends to show that the
one somewhat annoyed the other by sticking to his resins, and the other
one by recommending the use of iodine. M. Niepce somewhat ungraciously
expresses regret at having wasted so much time in experimenting with
iodine at M. Daguerre's suggestion, but ultimate results fully justified
Daguerre's recommendation, and proved that he was then on the right
track, while M. Niepce's experiments with resins, asphaltum, and
other substances terminated in nothing but tedious manipulations,
lengthy exposures, and unsatisfactory results. To M. Niepce, most
unquestionably, is due the honour of having produced the first permanent
sun-pictures, for we have seen that those obtained by Wedgwood and Davy
were as fleeting as a shadow, while those exhibited by M. Niepce in 1827
are still in their original condition, and, imperfect as they are, they
are likely to retain their permanency for ever. Their fault lay in
neither possessing beauty nor commercial applicability.
As M. Niepce died at Chalons-sur-Saone in 1833, and does not appear to
have improved his process much, if any, after entering into partnership
with M. Daguerre, and as I may not have occasion to allude to him or his
researches again, I think this will be the most fitting place to give a
brief description of his process, and his share in the labours of
bringing up the wonderful baby of science, afterwards named Photography,
to a safe and ineffaceable period of its existence.
The Heliographic process of M. Niepce consists of a solution of
asphaltum, bitumen of Judea, being spread on metal or glass plates,
submitted to the action of light either by superposition or in the
camera, and the unaffected parts dissolved away afterwards by means of a
suitable solvent. But, in case any student of photography should like to
produce one of the first form of permanent sun-pictures, I shall give
here the details of M. Niepce's own _modus operandi_ for preparing the
solution of bitumen and coating the plate:--
"I about half fill a wine-glass with this pulverised bitumen; I pour
upon it, drop by drop, the essential oil of lavender until the bitumen
is completely saturated. I afterwards add as much more of the essential
oil as causes the whole to stand about three lines above the mixture,
which is then covered and submitted to a gentle heat until the essential
oil is fully impregnated with the colouring matter of the bitumen. If
this varnish is not of the required consistency, it is to be allowed to
evaporate slowly, without heat, in a shallow dish, care being taken to
protect it from moisture, by which it is injured and at last decomposed.
In winter, or in rainy weather, the precaution is doubly necessary. A
tablet of plated silver, or well cleaned and warm glass, is to be highly
polished, on which a thin coating of the varnish is to be applied cold,
with a light roll of very soft skin; this will impart to it a fine
vermilion colour, and cover it with a very thin and equal coating. The
plate is then placed upon heated iron, which is wrapped round with
several folds of paper, from which, by this method, all moisture had
been previously expelled. When the varnish has ceased to simmer, the
plate is withdrawn from the heat, and left to cool and dry in a gentle
temperature, and protected from a damp atmosphere. In this part of the
operation a light disc of metal, with a handle in the centre, should be
held before the mouth, in order to condense the moisture of the breath."
In the foregoing description it will be observed how much importance M.
Niepce attached to the necessity of protecting the solution and prepared
plate from moisture, and that no precautions are given concerning the
effect of white light. It must be remembered, however, that the
material employed was very insensitive, requiring many hours of exposure
either in the camera or under a print or drawing placed in contact with
the prepared surface, and consequently such precaution might not have
been deemed necessary. Probably M. Niepce worked in a subdued light, but
there can be no doubt about the necessity of conducting both the
foregoing operations in yellow light. Had M. Niepce performed his
operations in a non-actinic light, the plates would certainly have been
more sensitive, and the unacted-on parts would have been more soluble;
thus rendering both the time of exposure and development more rapid.
After the plate was prepared and dried, it was exposed in the camera, or
by superposition, under a print, or other suitable subject, that would
lie flat. For the latter, an exposure of two or three hours in bright
sunshine was necessary, and the former required six or eight hours in a
strong light. Even those prolonged exposures did not produce a visible
image, and the resultant picture was not revealed to view until after a
tedious process of dissolving, for it could scarcely be called
development. M. Niepce himself says, "The next operation then is to
disengage the _shrouded_ imagery, and this is accomplished by a
solvent." The solvent consisted of one measure of the essential oil of
lavender and ten of oil of white petroleum or benzole. On removing the
tablet from the camera or other object, it was plunged into a bath of
the above solvent, and left there until the parts not hardened by light
were dissolved. When the picture was fully revealed, it was placed at an
angle to drain, and finished by washing it in water.
Except for the purpose of after-etching, M. Niepce's process was of
little commercial value then, but it has since been of some service in
the practice of photo-lithography. That, I think, is the fullest extent
of the commercial or artistic advantages derived from the utmost success
of M. Niepce's discoveries; but what he considered his failures, the
fact that he employed copper plates coated with silver for his
heliographic tablets, and endeavoured to darken the clean or clear parts
of the silvered plates with the fumes of iodine for the sake of contrast
only, may be safely accepted as the foundation of Daguerre's ultimate
success in discovering the extremely beautiful and workable process
known as the Daguerreotype.
M. Niepce appears to have done very little more towards perfecting the
heliographic process after joining Daguerre; but the latter effected
some improvements, and substituted for the bitumen of Judea the residuum
obtained by evaporating the essential oil of lavender, without, however,
attaining any important advance in that direction. After the death of M.
Nicephore Niepce, a new agreement was entered into by his son, M.
Isidore Niepce, and M. Daguerre, and we must leave those two
experimentalists pursuing their discoveries in France while we return to
England to pick up the chronological links that unite the history of
this wonderful discovery with the time that it was abandoned by Wedgwood
and Davy, and the period of its startling and brilliant realization.
In 1834, Mr. Henry Fox Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, Wilts, "began to put in
practice," as he informs us in his memoir read before the Royal Society,
a method which _he_ "had _devised_ some time previously, for employing
to purposes of utility the very curious property which has been long
known to chemists to be possessed by the nitrate of silver--namely, to
discolouration when exposed to the violet rays of light." The statement
just quoted places us at once on the debateable ground of our subject,
and compels us to pause and consider to what extent photography is
indebted to Mr. Talbot for its further development at this period and
five years subsequently. In the first place, it is not to be supposed
for a moment that a man of Mr. Talbot's position and education could
possibly be ignorant of what had been done by Mr. Thomas Wedgwood and
Sir Humphry Davy. Their experiments were published in the Journal of
the Royal Institution of Great Britain in June, 1802, and Mr. Talbot or
some of his friends could not have failed to have seen or heard of those
published details; and, in the second place, a comparison between the
last records of Wedgwood and Davy's experiments, and the first published
details of Mr. Talbot's process, shows not only that the two processes
are identically the same, but that Mr. Talbot published his process
before he had made a single step in advance of Wedgwood and Davy's
discoveries; and that his fixing solution was not a fixer at all, but
simply a retardant that delayed the gradual disappearance of the picture
only a short time longer. Mr. Talbot has generally been credited with
the honour of producing the first permanent sun-pictures on paper; but
there are grave reasons for doubting the justice of that honour being
entirely, if at all, due to him, and the following facts and extracts
will probably tend to set that question at rest, and transfer the laurel
to another brow.
To the late Rev. J. B. Reade is incontestably due the honour of having
first applied tannin as an accelerator, and hyposulphite of soda as a
fixing agent, to the production and retention of light-produced
pictures; and having first obtained an ineffaceable photograph upon
paper. Mr. Talbot's gallate of silver process was not patented or
published till 1841; whereas the Rev. J. B. Reade produced paper
negatives by means of gallic acid and nitrate of silver in 1837. It will
be remembered that Mr. Wedgwood had discovered and stated that the
chloride of silver was more sensitive when applied to white leather, and
Mr. Reade, by inductive reasoning, came to the conclusion that tanned
paper and silver would be more sensitive to light than ordinary paper
coated with nitrate of silver could possibly be. As the reverend
philosopher's ideas on that subject are probably the first that ever
impregnated the mind of man, and as his experiments and observations are
the very earliest in the pursuit of a gallic acid accelerator and
developer, I will give them in his own words.--"No one can dispute my
claim to be the first to suggest the use of gallic acid as a sensitiser
for prepared paper, and hyposulphite of soda as a fixer. These are the
keystones of the arch at which Davy and Young had laboured--or, as I may
say in the language of another science, we may vary the tones as we
please, but here is the fundamental base. My use of gallate of silver
was the result of an inference from Wedgwood's experiments with leather,
'which is more readily acted upon than paper' (_Journal of the Royal
Institution_, vol. i., p. 171). Mrs. Reade was so good as to give me a
pair of light-coloured leather gloves, that I might repeat Wedgwood's
experiment, and, as my friend Mr. Ackerman reminds me, her little
objection to let me have a second pair led me to say, 'Then I will tan
paper.' Accordingly I used an infusion of galls in the first instance in
the early part of the year 1837, when I was engaged in taking
photographs of microscopic objects. By a new arrangement of lenses in
the solar microscope, I produced a convergence of the rays of light,
while the rays of heat, owing to their different refractions, were
parallel or divergent. This fortunate dispersion of the calorific rays
enabled me to use objects mounted in balsam, as well as cemented
achromatic object glasses; and, indeed, such was the coolness of the
illumination, that even _infusoria_ in single drops of water were
perfectly happy and playful (_vide_ abstracts of the 'Philosophical
Transactions,' December 22nd, 1836). The continued expense of an
artist--though, at first, I employed my friend, Lens Aldons--to copy the
pictures on the screen was out of the question. I therefore fell back,
but without any sanguine expectations as to the result, upon the
photographic process adopted by Wedgwood, with which I happened to be
well acquainted. It was a _weary while_, however, before any
satisfactory impression was made, either on chloride or nitrate paper. I
succeeded better with the leather; but my fortunate inability to
replenish the little stock of this latter article induced me to apply
the tannin solution to paper, and thus I was at once placed, by a very
decided step, in advance of earlier experimenters, and I had the
pleasure of succeeding where Talbot acknowledges that he failed.
"Naturally enough, the solution which I used at first was too strong,
but, if you have ever been in what I may call _the agony of a find_, you
can conceive my sensations on witnessing the unwilling paper become in a
few seconds almost as black as my hat. There was just a passing glimpse
of outline, 'and in a moment all was dark.' It was evident, however,
that I was in possession of all, and more than all, I wanted, and that
the dilution of so powerful an accelerator would probably give
successful results. The large amount of dilution greatly surprised me;
and, indeed, before I obtained a satisfactory picture, the quantity of
gallic acid in the infusion must have been quite homoeopathic; but
this is in exact accordance with modern practice and known laws. In
reference to this point, Sir John Herschel, writing from Slough, in
April, 1840, says to Mr. Redman, then of Peckham (where I had resided),
'I am surprised at the weak solution employed, and how, with such, you
have been able to get a depth of shadow sufficient for so very sharp a
re-transfer is to me marvellous.' I may speak of Mr. Redmond as a
photographic pupil of mine, and at my request, he communicated the
process to Sir John, which, 'on account of the extreme clearness and
sharpness of the results,' to use Sir John's words, much interested him.
"Dr. Diamond also, whose labours are universally appreciated, first saw
my early attempts at Peckham in 1837, and heard of my use of gallate of
silver, and was thus led to adopt what Admiral Smyth then called 'a
quick mode of taking bad pictures'; but, as I told the Admiral in reply,
he was born a _baby_. Whether our philosophical baby is 'out of its
teens' may be a question; at all events, it is a very fine child, and
handles the pencil of nature with consummate skill.
"But of all the persons who heard of my new accelerator, it is most
important to state that my old and valued friend, the late Andrew Ross,
told Mr. Talbot how first of all, by means of the solar microscope, I
threw the image of the object on prepared paper, and then, while the
paper was yet wet, washed it over with the infusion of galls, when a
sufficiently dense negative was quickly obtained. In the celebrated
trial, "Talbot _versus_ Laroche," Mr. Talbot, in his cross-examination,
and in an almost breathless court, acknowledged that he had received
this information from Ross, and from that moment it became the
unavoidable impression that he was scarcely justified in taking out a
patent for applying my accelerator to any known photogenic paper.
"The three known papers were those impregnated with the nitrate,
chloride, and the iodide of silver--the two former used by Wedgwood and
Young, and the latter by Davy. It is true that Talbot says of the iodide
of silver that it is quite insensitive to light, and so it is as he
makes it; but when he reduces it to the condition described by
Davy--viz., affected by the presence of a little free nitrate of
silver--then he must acknowledge, with Davy, that 'it is far more
sensitive to the action of light than either the nitrate or the muriate,
and is evidently a distinct compound.' In this state, also, the infusion
of galls or gallic acid is, as we all know, most decided and
instantaneous, and so I found it to be in my early experiments. Of
course I tried the effects of my accelerator on many salts of silver,
but especially upon the iodide, in consequence of my knowledge of Davy's
papers on iodine in the 'Philosophical Transactions.' These I had
previously studied, in conjunction with my chemical friend, Mr. Hodgson,
then of Apothecaries' Hall. I did not, however, use iodised paper, which
is well described by Talbot in the _Philosophical Magazine_ for March,
1838, as a _substitute_ for other sensitive papers, but only as one
among many experiments alluded to in my letter to Mr. Brayley.
"My pictures were exhibited at the Royal Society, and also at Lord
Northampton's, at his lordship's request, in April, 1839, when Mr.
Talbot also exhibited his. In my letter to Mr. Brayley, I did not
describe iodised pictures, and, therefore, it was held that exhibition
in the absence of description left the process legally unknown. Mr.
Talbot consequently felt justified in taking out a patent for uniting my
_known_ accelerator with Davy's _known_ sensitive silver compound,
adopting my method (already communicated to him) with reference to
Wedgwood's papers, and adding specific improvements in manipulation.
Whatever varied opinion may consequently be formed as to the defence of
the patent in court, there can be but one as to the skill of the
patentee.
"It is obvious that, in the process so conducted by me with the solar
microscope, I was virtually _within_ my camera, standing between the
object and the prepared paper. Hence the exciting and developing
processes were conducted under _one operation_ (subsequently patented by
Talbot), and the fact of a latent image being brought out was not forced
upon my attention. I did, however, perceive this phenomenon upon one
occasion, after I had been suddenly called away, when taking an
impression of the _Trientalis Europaea_--and surprised enough I was, and
stood in astonishment to look at it. But with all this, I was only, as
the judge said, "_very hot_." I did not realize the _master fact_ that
the latent image which had been developed was the basis of photographic
manipulation. The merit of this discovery is Talbot's, and his only, and
I honour him greatly for his skill and earlier discernment. I was,
indeed, myself fully aware that the image darkened under the influence
of my sensitiser, while I placed my hand before the lens of the
instrument to stop out the light; and my solar mezzotint, as I then
termed it, was, in fact, brought out and perfected under my own eye by
the agency of gallic acid in the infusion, rather than by the influence
of direct solar action. But the notion of developing a latent image in
these microscopic photographs never crossed my mind, even after I had
witnessed such development in the _Trientalis Europaea_. My original
notion was that the infusion of galls, added to the wet chloride or
nitrate paper while the picture was thrown upon it, produced only a new
and highly sensitive compound; whereas, by its peculiar and continuous
action after the first impact of light on the now sensitive paper, I was
also, as Talbot has shown, employing its property of development as well
as excitement. My ignorance of its properties was no bar to its action.
However, I threw the _ball_, and Talbot caught it, and no man can be
more willing than myself to acknowledge our obligations to this
distinguished photographer. He compelled the world to listen to him, and
he had something worth hearing to communicate; and it is a sufficient
return to me that he publicly acknowledged his obligation to me, with
reference to what Sir David Brewster calls 'an essential part of his
patent' (_vide North British Review_, No. 14 article--'Photography').