having published my use of hyposulphite of soda, which Mr. Hodgson made
for me in 1837, when London did not contain an ounce of it for sale. The
early operators had no fixer; that was _their fix_; and, so far as any
record exists, they got no further in this direction than 'imagining
some experiments on the subject!' I tried ammonia, but it acted too
energetically on the picture itself to be available for the purpose. It
led me, however, to the ammonia nitrate process of printing positives, a
description of which process (though patented by Talbot in 1843) I sent
to a photographic brother in 1839, and a quotation from my letter of
that date has already appeared in one of my communications to _Notes and
Queries_. On examining Brande's Chemistry, under the hope of still
finding the desired solvent which should have a greater affinity for the
simple silver compound on the uncoloured part of the picture than for
the portion blackened by light, I happened to see it stated, on Sir John
Herschel's authority, that hyposulphite of soda dissolves chloride of
silver. I need not now say that I used this fixer with success. The
world, however, would not have been long without it, for, when Sir John
himself became a photographer in the following year, he first of all
used hyposulphite of ammonia, and then permanently fell back upon the
properties of his other compound. Two of my solar microscope negatives,
taken in 1837, and exhibited with several others by Mr. Brayley in 1839
as illustrations of my letter and of his lecture at the London
Institution, are now in the possession of the London Photographic
Society. They are, no doubt, the earliest examples of the agency of two
chemical compounds which will be co-existent with photography itself,
viz., gallate of silver and hyposulphite of soda, and my use of them, as
above described, will sanction my claim to be the first to take paper
pictures rapidly, and to fix them permanently.
"Such is a short account of my contribution to this interesting branch
of science, and, in the pleasure of the discovery, I have a sufficient
reward."
These lengthy extracts from the Rev. Mr. Reade's published letter render
further comment all but superfluous, but I cannot resist taking
advantage of the opportunity here afforded of pointing out to all lovers
of photography and natural justice that the progress of the discovery
has advanced to a far greater extent by Mr. Reade's reasoning and
experiments than it was by Mr. Talbot's ingenuity. The latter, as Mr.
Reade observes, only "caught the ball" and threw it into the Patent
Office, with some improvements in the manipulations. Mr. Reade
generously ascribes all honour and glory to Mr. Talbot for his
shrewdness in seizing what he had overlooked, viz., the development of
the latent image; but there is a quiet current of rebuke running all
through Mr. Reade's letter about the justice of patenting a known
sensitiser and a known accelerator, which he alone had combined and
applied to the successful production of a negative on paper. Mr.
Talbot's patent process was nothing more, yet he endeavoured to secure
a monopoly of what was in substance the discovery and invention of
another. Mr. Talbot was either very precipitate, or ill-advised, to rush
to the Patent Office with his modification, and even at this distant
date it is much to be regretted that he did so, for his rash act has,
unhappily for photography, proved a pernicious precedent. Mr. Reade gave
his discoveries to the world freely, and the "pleasure of the discovery"
was "a sufficient reward." All honour to such discoverers. They, and
they only, are the true lovers of science and art, who take up the torch
where another laid it down, or lost it, and carry it forward another
stage towards perfection, without sullying its brightness or dimming the
flame with sordid motives.
The Rev. J. B. Reade lived to see the process _he_ discovered and
watched over in its embryo state, developed with wondrous rapidity into
one of the most extensively applied arts of this marvellous age, and
died, regretted and esteemed by all who knew him, December 12th, 1870.
Photographers, your occupations are his monument, but let his name be a
tablet on your hearts, and his unselfishness your emulation!
The year 1838 gave birth to another photographic discovery, little
thought of and of small promise at the time, but out of which have
flowed all the various modifications of solar and mechanical carbon
printing. This was the discovery of Mr. Mungo Ponton, who first observed
and announced the effects of the sun's rays upon bichromate of potash.
But that gentleman was unwise in his generation, and did not patent his
discovery, so a whole host of patent locusts fell upon the field of
research in after years, and quickly seized the manna he had left, to
spread on their own bread. Mr. Mungo Ponton spread a solution of
bichromate of potash upon paper, submitted it under a suitable object to
the sun's rays, and told all the world, without charge, that the light
hardened the bichromate to the extent of its action, and that the
unacted-upon portions could be dissolved away, leaving the object
_white_ upon a yellow or orange ground. Other experimenters played
variations on Mr. Ponton's bichromate scale, and amongst the performers
were M. E. Becquerel, of France, and our own distinguished countryman,
Mr. Robert Hunt.
During the years that elapsed between the death of M. Niepce and the
period to which I have brought these records, little was heard or known
of the researches of M. Daguerre, but he was not idle, nor had he
abandoned his iodine ideas. He steadily pursued his subject, and worked
with a continuity that gained him the unenviable reputation of a
lunatic. His persistency created doubts of his sanity, but he toiled on
_solus_, confident that he was not in pursuit of an impossibility, and
sanguine of success. That success came, hastened by lucky chance, and
early in January, 1839, M. Daguerre announced the interesting and
important fact that the problem was solved. Pictures in the
camera-obscura could be, not only seen, but caught and retained. M.
Daguerre had laboured, sought, and found, and the bare announcement of
his wonderful discovery electrified the world of science.
The electric telegraph could not then flash the fascinating intelligence
from Paris to London, but the news travelled fast, nevertheless, and the
unexpected report of M. Daguerre's triumph hurried Mr. Talbot forward
with a similar statement of success. Mr. Talbot declared his triumph on
the 31st of January, 1839, and published in the following month the
details of a process which was little, if any, in advance of that
already known.
Daguerre delayed the publication of his process until a pension of six
thousand francs per annum had been secured to himself, and four thousand
francs per annum to M. Isidore Niepce for life, with a reversion of
one-half to their widows. In the midst of political and social struggles
France was proud of the glory of such a marvellous discovery, and
liberally rewarded her fortunate sons of science with honourable
distinction and substantial emolument. She was proud and generous to a
chivalrous extent, for she pensioned her sons that she might have the
"glory of endowing the world of science and of art with one of the most
surprising discoveries" that had been made on her soil; and, because she
considered that "the invention did not admit of being secured by
patent;" but avarice and cupidity frustrated her noble and generous
intentions in this country, and England alone was harassed with
injunctions and prosecutions, while all the rest of the world
participated in the pleasure and profits of the noble gift of France.
In July, 1839, M. Daguerre divulged his secret at the request and
expense of the French Government, and the process which bore his name
was found to be totally different, both in manipulation and effect, from
any sun-pictures that had been obtained in England. The Daguerreotype
was a latent image produced by light on an iodised silver plate, and
developed, or made visible, by the fumes of mercury; but the resultant
picture was one of the most shimmering and vapoury imaginable, wanting
in solidity, colour, and firmness. In fact, photography as introduced by
M. Daguerre was in every sense a wonderfully shadowy and all but
invisible thing, and not many removes from the dark ages of its
creation. The process was extremely delicate and difficult, slow and
tedious to manipulate, and too insensitive to be applied to portraiture
with any prospect of success, from fifteen to twenty minutes' exposure
in bright sunshine being necessary to obtain a picture. The mode of
proceeding was as follows:--A copper plate with a coating of silver was
carefully cleaned and polished on the silvered side, that was placed,
silver side downwards, over a vessel containing iodine in crystals,
until the silvered surface assumed a golden-yellow colour. The plate was
then transferred to the camera-obscura, and submitted to the action of
light. After the plate had received the requisite amount of exposure, it
was placed over a box containing mercury, the fumes of which, on the
application of a gentle heat, developed the latent image. The picture
was then washed in salt and water, or a solution of hyposulphite of
soda, to remove the iodide of silver, washed in clean water afterwards,
and dried, and the Daguerreotype was finished according to Daguerre's
first published process.
The development of the latent image by mercury subliming was the most
marvellous and unlooked-for part of the process, and it was for that
all-important thing that Daguerre was entirely indebted to chance.
Having put one of his apparently useless iodized and exposed silver
plates into a cupboard containing a pot of mercury, Daguerre was greatly
surprised, on visiting the cupboard some time afterwards, to find the
blank looking plate converted into a visible picture. Other plates were
iodized and exposed and placed in the cupboard, and the same mysterious
process of development was repeated, and it was not until this thing and
the other thing had been removed and replaced over and over again, that
Daguerre became aware that quicksilver, an article that had been used
for making mirrors and reflecting images for years, was the developer of
the invisible image. It was indeed a most marvellous and unexpected
result. Daguerre had devoted years of labour and made numberless
experiments to obtain a transcript of nature drawn by her own hand, but
all his studied efforts and weary hours of labour had only resulted in
repeated failures and disappointments, and it appeared that Nature
herself had grown weary of his bungling, and resolved to show him the
way.
The realization of his hopes was more accidental than inferential. The
compounds with which he worked, neither produced a visible nor a latent
image capable of being developed with any of the chemicals with which he
was experimenting. At last accident rendered him more service than
reasoning, and occult properties produced the effect his mental and
inductive faculties failed to accomplish; and here we observe the great
difference between the two successful discoverers, Reade and Daguerre.
At this stage of the discovery I ignore Talbot's claim in _toto_. Reade
arrived at his results by reasoning, experiment, observation, and
judiciously weakening and controlling the re-agent he commenced his
researches with. He had the infinite pleasure and disappointment of
seeing his first picture flash into existence, and disappear again
almost instantly, but in that instant he saw the cause of his success
and failure, and his inductive reasoning reduced his failure to success;
whereas Daguerre _found_ his result, was puzzled, and utterly at a loss
to account for it, and it was only by a process of blind-man's bluff in
his chemical cupboard that he laid his hands on the precious pot of
mercury that produced the visible image.
That was a discovery, it is true; but a bungling one, at best. Daguerre
only worked intelligently with one-half of the elements of success; the
other was thrust in his way, and the most essential part of his
achievement was a triumphant accident. Daguerre did half the work--or,
rather, one-third--light did the second part, and chance performed the
rest, so that Daguerre's share of the honour was only one-third. Reade
did two-thirds of the process, the first and third, intelligently;
therefore to him alone is due the honour of discovering practical
photography. His was a successful application of known properties, equal
to an invention; Daguerre's was an accidental result arising from
unknown causes and effects, and consequently a discovery of the lowest
order. To England, then, and not to France, is the world indebted for
the discovery of photography, and in the order of its earliest,
greatest, and most successful discoverers and advancers, I place the
Rev. J. B. Reade first and highest.
[Illustration: SECOND PERIOD.
DAGUERREOTYPE.
L. J. M. DAGUERRE.
_Used Iodine, 1839._
JOHN FREDERICK GODDARD.
_Applied Bromine, 1840._
NEW YORK.
_Copy of Instantaneous Daguerreotype, 1854._]
SECOND PERIOD.
PUBLICITY AND PROGRESS.
1839 has generally been accepted as the year of the birth of Practical
Photography, but that may now be considered an error. It was, however,
the Year of Publicity, and the progress that followed with such
marvellous rapidity may be freely received as an adversely eloquent
comment on the principles of secrecy and restriction, in any art or
science, like photography, which requires the varied suggestions of
numerous minds and many years of experiment in different directions
before it can be brought to a state of workable certainty and artistic
and commercial applicability. Had Reade concealed his success and the
nature of his accelerator, Talbot might have been bungling on with
modifications of the experiments of Wedgwood and Davy to this day; and
had Daguerre not sold the secret of his iodine vapour as a sensitiser,
and his accidentally discovered property of mercury as a developer, he
might never have got beyond the vapoury images he produced. As it was,
Daguerre did little or nothing to improve his process and make it yield
the extremely vigorous and beautiful results it did in after years. As
in Mr. Reade's case with the Calotype process, Daguerre threw the ball
and others caught it. Daguerre's advertised improvements of his process
were lamentable failures and roundabout ways to obtain sensitive
amalgams--exceedingly ingenious, but excessively bungling and
impractical. To make the plates more sensitive to light, and, as
Daguerre said, obtain pictures of objects in motion and animated scenes,
he suggested that the silver plate should first be cleaned and polished
in the usual way, then to deposit successively layers of mercury, and
gold, and platinum. But the process was so tedious, unworkable, and
unsatisfactory, no one ever attempted to employ it either commercially
or scientifically. In publishing his first process, with its working
details, Daguerre appears to have surrendered all that he knew, and to
have been incapable of carrying his discovery to a higher degree of
advancement. Without Mr. Goddard's bromine accelerator and M. Fizeau's
chloride of gold fixer and invigorator, the Daguerreotype would never
have been either a commercial success or a permanent production.
1840 was almost as important a period in the annals of photography as
the year of its enunciation, and to the two valuable improvements and
one interesting importation, the Daguerreotype process was indebted for
its success all over the world; and photography, even as it is practised
now, is probably indebted for its present state of advancement to Mr.
John Frederick Goddard, who applied bromine, as an accelerator, to the
Daguerreotype process this year. In the early part of the Daguerreotype
period it was so insensitive there was very little prospect of being
able to take portraits with it through a lens. To meet this difficulty
Mr. Wolcott, an American optician, constructed a reflecting camera and
brought it to London. It was an ingenious contrivance, but did not fully
answer the expectations of the inventor. It certainly did not require
such a long exposure with this camera as when the rays from the image or
sitter passed through a lens; but, as the sensitised plate was placed
_between_ the sitter and the reflector, the picture was necessarily
small, and neither very sharp nor satisfactory. This was a mechanical
contrivance to shorten the time of exposure, which partially succeeded,
but it was chemistry, and not mechanics, that effected the desirable
result. Both Mr. Goddard and M. Antoine F. J. Claudet, of London,
employed chlorine as a means of increasing the sensitiveness of the
iodised silver plate, but it was not sufficiently accelerative to meet
the requirements of the Daguerreotype process. Subsequently Mr. Goddard
discovered that the vapour of bromine, added to that of iodine, imparted
an extraordinary degree of sensitiveness to the prepared plate, and
reduced the time of sitting from minutes to seconds. The addition of the
fumes of bromine to those of iodine formed a compound of bromo-iodide of
silver on the surface of the Daguerreotype plate, and not only increased
the sensitiveness, but added to the strength and beauty of the resulting
picture, and M. Fizeau's method of precipitating a film of gold over the
whole surface of the plate still further increased the brilliancy of the
picture and ensured its permanency. I have many Daguerreotypes in my
possession now that were made over forty years ago, and they are as
brilliant and perfect as they were on the day they were taken. I fear no
one can say the same for any of Fox Talbot's early prints, or even more
recent examples of silver printing.
Another important event of this year was the importation of the first
photographic lens, camera, &c., into England. These articles were
brought from Paris by Sir Hussey Vivian, present M.P. for Glamorganshire
(1889). It was the first lot of such articles that the Custom House
officers had seen, and they were at a loss to know how to classify it.
Finally they passed it under the general head of Optical Instruments.
Sir Hussey told me this, himself, several years before he was made a
baronet. What changes fifty years have wrought even in the duties of
Custom House officers, for the imports and exports of photographic
apparatus and materials must now amount to many thousands per annum!
Having described the conditions and state of progress photography had
attained at the time of my first contact with it, I think I may now
enter into greater details, and relate my own personal experiences from
this period right up to the end of its jubilee celebration.
I was just fourteen years old when photography was made practicable by
the publication of the two processes, one by Daguerre, and the other by
Fox Talbot, and when I heard or read of the wonderful discovery I was
fired with a desire to obtain a sight of these "sun-pictures," but the
fire was kept smouldering for some time before my desire was gratified.
Nothing travelled very fast in those days. Railroads had not long been
started, and were not very extensively developed. Telegraphy, by
electricity, was almost unknown, and I was a fixture, having just been
apprenticed to an engraving firm hundreds of miles from London. But at
last I caught sight of one of those marvellous drawings made by the sun
in the window of the Post Office of my native town. It was a small
Daguerreotype which had been sent there along with a notice that a
licence to practise the "art" could be obtained of the patentee. I
forget now what amount the patentee demanded for a licence, but I know
that at the time referred to it was so far beyond my means and hopes
that I never entertained the idea of becoming a licencee. I believe some
one in the neighbourhood bought a licence, but either could not or did
not make use of it commercially.
Some time after that, a Miss Wigley, from London, came to the town to
practise Daguerreotyping, but she did not remain long, and could not, I
think, have made a profitable visit. If so, it could scarcely be
wondered at, for the sun-pictures of that period were such thin,
shimmering reflections, and distortions of the human face divine, that
very few people were impressed either by the process or the newest
wonder of the world. At that early period of photography, the plates
were so insensitive, the sittings so long, and the conditions so
terrible, it was not easy to induce anyone either to undergo the ordeal
of sitting, or to pay the sum of twenty-one shillings for a very small
and unsatisfactory portrait. In the infancy of the Daguerreotype
process, the sitters were all placed out-of-doors, in direct sunshine,
which naturally made them screw up or shut their eyes, and every feature
glistened, and was painfully revealed. Many amusing stories have been
told about the trials, mishaps, and disappointments attending those
long and painful sittings, but the best that ever came to my knowledge
was the following. In the earliest of the forties, a young lady
went a considerable distance, in Yorkshire, to sit to an itinerant
Daguerreotypist for her portrait, and, being limited for time,
could only give one sitting. She was placed before the camera, the
slide drawn, lens uncapped, and requested to sit there until the
Daguerreotypist returned. He went away, probably to put his "mercury
box" in order, or to have a smoke, for it was irksome--both to sitter
and operator--to sit or stand doing nothing during those necessarily
long exposures. When the operator returned, after an absence of fifteen
or twenty minutes, the lady was sitting where he left her, and appeared
glad to be relieved from her constrained position. She departed, and he
proceeded with the development of the picture. The plate was examined
from time to time, in the usual way, but there was no appearance of the
lady. The ground, the wall, and the chair whereon she sat, were all
visible, but the image of the lady was not; and the operator was
completely puzzled, if not alarmed. He left the lady sitting, and found
her sitting when he returned, so he was quite unable to account for her
mysterious non-appearance in the picture. The mystery was, however,
explained in a few days, when the lady called for her portrait, for she
admitted that she got up and walked about as soon as he left her, and
only sat down again when she heard him returning. The necessity of
remaining before the camera was not recognised by that sitter. I
afterwards reversed that result myself by focussing the chair, drawing
the slide, uncapping the lens, sitting down, and rising leisurely to cap
the lens again, and obtained a good portrait without showing a ghost of
the chair or anything else. The foregoing is evidence of the
insensitiveness of the plates at that early period of the practice of
photography; but that state of inertion did not continue long, for as
soon as the accelerating properties of bromine became generally known,
the time of sitting was greatly reduced, and good Daguerreotype views
were obtained by simply uncapping the lens as quickly as possible. I
have taken excellent views in that manner myself in England, and, when
in America, I obtained instantaneous views of Niagara Falls and other
places quite as rapidly and as perfect as any instantaneous views made
on gelatine dry plates, one of which I have copied and enlarged to 12 by
10 inches, and may possibly reproduce the small copy in these pages.