A Step Forward: The 1800's
The turn of the century brought with it some very important events that were happening all over the globe. The Dutch East Indies Trading Company, one of the more powerful trading companies at the time, dissolves at the beginning of 1800 as well as Austria declaring war with France. The crowning of Pope Pius VII occurred shortly after. In America, the Library of Congress is established and the first smallpox vaccine is administered. John Adams becomes the first president to live in the White House and Congress met for the first time in the unfinished Capital building. Wow, it's hard to believe all the things that can happen in one year!!But enough about the whole world! This project is about photography, after all, and not history! Lots of important photographic advancements were made in the nineteenth century, the first of which was made in 1801 by a scientist named Thomas Young.
Thomas Young was born in the UK in 1773 and was a brilliant physician and physicist. He was attending school as a medical student when he turned towards the study of light. He created an experiment that had two pinholes that allowed light to pass through them and onto a screen. Young saw that the light spread and overlapped, creating repeating bands of light and dark. Using the results, he created his wave nature of light theory. He then used this theory to explain the colors that appeared in thin films like soap bubbles. After this, he calculated the approximate wavelengths for all of Newton's seven colors by relating color to wavelength. He also studied color perception and said that the human eye didn't need a different mechanism to see all colors, we only needed three-- blue, green, and red. his color theories greatly affected color photography.
Dr. Schulze's and Thomas Wedgewood's work had made quite the influence for our next set of scientists. Joseph and Claude Niépce were born into a small family living in the middle- upper class in Burgundy, France. During this time in history, there was not a lot of industrial advancements going on. One important invention, however, was the pyréolophore. This was essentially the world's first internal combustion engine; the engine, at this time, was still in its early stages. Claude decided to petition the English king, George III, for a grant in order to continue research on the pyréolophore. Joseph decided to stay at home and work on the progress of photography. In 1822, he successfully captured images on pieces of paper and pewter plates. However, his development was belittled in France due to the post-Napoléonic times. He moved to England to continue his research alongside his brother.
Claude's studies in England were not going as well as Joseph's, as the king was angry with him and did nothing with his patent for the motorboat. The brothers first presented their idea to the Royal Botanic Gardens, as the images on the pewter plates would help with the classification of plants and other botany. It was at this handoff that the brother's work took a backseat. The Royal Society didn't like their ideas and hid them away for many years until it was discovered by a man named Helmut Erich Robert Gernsheim. He is one of the few people known today to have any copies of the photographic images produced by the brothers.
Joseph Niépce continued his work with another Frenchman named Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (LDM Daguerre) in the year 1829. Daguerre was a avid artist and was well known for his work. Both men wanted to come up with a way to create a permanent image onto pieces of metal plates. However, after four years of hard work, Joseph Niépce died in 1833 and the partners had yet to come up with a good idea. Daguerre continued his experiments and did not begin to show some of his fellow artists and scientists until 1838. One of the scientists, an astronomer named François Arago, was an avid member of the French legislature. He believed that Daguerre's work had great potential and got him audiences with both the Royal Académie des Sciences and the Chambre des Députés.
On August 19, 1839, Daguerre explained his process for creating daguerreotypes (Daguerre coined the name for his invention) to a joint committee from the Académie des Sciences and the Académie des Beaux-Arts. People were enthralled by his images. They were clear and extremely detailed and each was one-of-a-kind. The process to create one of these daguerreotypes involved exposing a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper, sensitized with iodine vapors, to the light. Then, after exposure, you had to develop the pictures using mercury fumes and then the picture was sealed with saltwater. These images, however, still had a very long exposure time. People would have to sit totally still for hours on end just to get their portrait taken.
Around the time when Daguerre released his photographs on the pewter plates, an Englishman by the name of William Henry Fox Talbot was designing his own images. He discovered that if you took a piece of chemically treated paper and left it in the light, the paper would darken. He also found that if you placed a leaf or a twig over the paper, the area the object was in would not darken. In January of 1839, he presented several of his "photogenic drawings" to the Royal Society, well before Daguerre and his metal plates. The Society was very interested in his photos, as they would make it easier to sort and classify plants and specimens based on their image. These images were not permanent, but Fox Talbot was determined to fix that.
On September 23, 1840, he saw his opportunity. Fox Talbot discovered that when he left the chemically treated paper in the light for mere seconds, it produced an image that could be brought into focus and clarity by an "exciting liquid". This liquid was really nothing more that a gallic acid solution, but it changed the whole world of photography. In February 1841, he patented his "calotypes" and the process of creating them. with all of the pieces of the process in place, he began a trip across Europe to sell rights for his patent and give demonstrations. He gave a firsthand process explanation in Paris in May of 1843. He returned to England and published a book (The Pencil of Nature) full of all of his pictures from across Europe in 1844. He lived until 1877 trying to perfect his calotype process. However, it was later discovered that his photos did fade after time if exposed to too much light, so the idea of a 'permanent photograph' was still far away.
Thomas Young was born in the UK in 1773 and was a brilliant physician and physicist. He was attending school as a medical student when he turned towards the study of light. He created an experiment that had two pinholes that allowed light to pass through them and onto a screen. Young saw that the light spread and overlapped, creating repeating bands of light and dark. Using the results, he created his wave nature of light theory. He then used this theory to explain the colors that appeared in thin films like soap bubbles. After this, he calculated the approximate wavelengths for all of Newton's seven colors by relating color to wavelength. He also studied color perception and said that the human eye didn't need a different mechanism to see all colors, we only needed three-- blue, green, and red. his color theories greatly affected color photography.
Dr. Schulze's and Thomas Wedgewood's work had made quite the influence for our next set of scientists. Joseph and Claude Niépce were born into a small family living in the middle- upper class in Burgundy, France. During this time in history, there was not a lot of industrial advancements going on. One important invention, however, was the pyréolophore. This was essentially the world's first internal combustion engine; the engine, at this time, was still in its early stages. Claude decided to petition the English king, George III, for a grant in order to continue research on the pyréolophore. Joseph decided to stay at home and work on the progress of photography. In 1822, he successfully captured images on pieces of paper and pewter plates. However, his development was belittled in France due to the post-Napoléonic times. He moved to England to continue his research alongside his brother.
Claude's studies in England were not going as well as Joseph's, as the king was angry with him and did nothing with his patent for the motorboat. The brothers first presented their idea to the Royal Botanic Gardens, as the images on the pewter plates would help with the classification of plants and other botany. It was at this handoff that the brother's work took a backseat. The Royal Society didn't like their ideas and hid them away for many years until it was discovered by a man named Helmut Erich Robert Gernsheim. He is one of the few people known today to have any copies of the photographic images produced by the brothers.
Joseph Niépce continued his work with another Frenchman named Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (LDM Daguerre) in the year 1829. Daguerre was a avid artist and was well known for his work. Both men wanted to come up with a way to create a permanent image onto pieces of metal plates. However, after four years of hard work, Joseph Niépce died in 1833 and the partners had yet to come up with a good idea. Daguerre continued his experiments and did not begin to show some of his fellow artists and scientists until 1838. One of the scientists, an astronomer named François Arago, was an avid member of the French legislature. He believed that Daguerre's work had great potential and got him audiences with both the Royal Académie des Sciences and the Chambre des Députés.
On August 19, 1839, Daguerre explained his process for creating daguerreotypes (Daguerre coined the name for his invention) to a joint committee from the Académie des Sciences and the Académie des Beaux-Arts. People were enthralled by his images. They were clear and extremely detailed and each was one-of-a-kind. The process to create one of these daguerreotypes involved exposing a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper, sensitized with iodine vapors, to the light. Then, after exposure, you had to develop the pictures using mercury fumes and then the picture was sealed with saltwater. These images, however, still had a very long exposure time. People would have to sit totally still for hours on end just to get their portrait taken.
Around the time when Daguerre released his photographs on the pewter plates, an Englishman by the name of William Henry Fox Talbot was designing his own images. He discovered that if you took a piece of chemically treated paper and left it in the light, the paper would darken. He also found that if you placed a leaf or a twig over the paper, the area the object was in would not darken. In January of 1839, he presented several of his "photogenic drawings" to the Royal Society, well before Daguerre and his metal plates. The Society was very interested in his photos, as they would make it easier to sort and classify plants and specimens based on their image. These images were not permanent, but Fox Talbot was determined to fix that.
On September 23, 1840, he saw his opportunity. Fox Talbot discovered that when he left the chemically treated paper in the light for mere seconds, it produced an image that could be brought into focus and clarity by an "exciting liquid". This liquid was really nothing more that a gallic acid solution, but it changed the whole world of photography. In February 1841, he patented his "calotypes" and the process of creating them. with all of the pieces of the process in place, he began a trip across Europe to sell rights for his patent and give demonstrations. He gave a firsthand process explanation in Paris in May of 1843. He returned to England and published a book (The Pencil of Nature) full of all of his pictures from across Europe in 1844. He lived until 1877 trying to perfect his calotype process. However, it was later discovered that his photos did fade after time if exposed to too much light, so the idea of a 'permanent photograph' was still far away.
Fox Talbot's calotypes set up the stage for our next important person in line. Frederick Scott Archer was Born in England in 1813. He lost both of his parents at a young age and was raised by distant relatives. He became an apprentice to a silversmith in London when he was young. He began working as a sculptor creating busts for people and used photos to help him with his work. Archer was well-versed in the calotype, but he didn't like the uneven coloring and the texture of the calotype negatives. His experimenting paid off in 1849 when he coated a glass plate with a collodion solution while the plate was still wet. He tested his process several times before publishing his findings.
The collodion wet plate process--or "wet plate process"--allowed for lots of benefits. It had the ability of easy reproduction like the calotype, amazing clarity like a daguerreotype, and it allowed people to dramatically reduce the exposure time. It was also much cheaper to produce that calotypes and daguerreotypes. He published an article in The Chemist in 1851 and in 1852, he wrote and published A Manual of the Collodion Photographic Process. Unfortunately, Archer never patented any on his work until it was too late to make much of a profit off of and he died in the year 1857.
In March of 1819, André-Adolphe-Eugene-Disdéri (or Adolphe Disdéri for short) was born in Paris, France. Though he originally sought after the arts, he started out in the world of business after his father passed away and continued until he was in a very stable marriage. During the Revolution of 1848, him and his wife moved to Brest in the western part of France and opened a small photographic studio that produced daguerreotypes. He left his wife in charge of their studio and traveled to Nimes to begin using the wet plate process to photograph portraits for people as well as lots of other things. By 1854, Disdéri owned the largest photographic studio in Paris.
Around this time, people in the upper-middle class would use calling cards when attending parties. Disdéri came up with an idea for a camera that had four lenses and a divided septum that allowed the camera to capture multiple portraits on a single wet plate. The printed images, or "carte-de-viste", as they were patented as, allowed a person to have multiple poses and they were able to cut the carte-de-vistes apart and glue them onto their calling cards. A lot of the cards and portraitures had celebrities of higher classes on them, so they became extremely popular and collectable. These portraitures were also more affordable for people in the lower-middle class. Disdéri made a fortune from this patent after the portraitures became popular. However, by 1868, the carte-de-viste had passed and he didn't have any other advancements as large as them.
During the mid-1850's, a very important phenomenon was introduced. The idea of the stereoscope came into invention and popularity during this time. Stereoscopic images had the idea of making the two images merge together to make them appear 3D. Our eyes are sitting in two different places on our head and naturally see two images that are nearly identical. Our brain combined these two images, providing us with depth and spatial perception. The stereoscope attempts to do the same thing as your brain. Two images that are nearly identical are placed side-by-side, and when you see them, they look like one image that has space and depth to it, making the image appear 3D.
A British physician named Sir Charles Wheatstone created a predecessor for the stereoscope in 1838. It used a single sheet of paper until photography became advanced enough. Oliver Wendell Holmes, an American jurist, made the famous model of the stereoscope that we all recognize even today based on Wheatstone's model. The popularity of it skyrocketed when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert received a stereographic viewer at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851. The stereographic viewers were popular from the 1860's all the way to the 1930's when motion picture films were just beginning. They allowed people a glimpse at the world around them even if it was a thousand miles away. They would become even more popular after being displayed at The Great Exhibition in London in 1851.
The next advancement is probably the most important of all of them that happened in the 1800's. Pictures were clearly becoming very popular all over the world. Napoleon III, Queen Victoria, and Abraham Lincoln all had their pictures taken for various reasons. Here's the catch: no pictures to date had ever been made in color. A Scottish physicist by the name of James Clerk-Maxwell was about to change that.
From the time Maxwell was an adolescent, he showed a certain brilliance and was enrolled in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland when he was only 16 years old to pursue a career in optics and color research. After 3 years of study, he moved to Cambridge University's Trinity College and graduated in 1854. He taught at Trinity for a Time before moving to the physics department at Marischal College. This is where he met his wife, Katherine Mary Dewar. While he worked at Marischal, he experimented with all kinds of different theories, including electromagnetism and Thomas Young's three-color theory of light. He gained the help of his friend, Thomas Sutton, and they presented the world's first color photograph to the Royal Institute of London in 1861. The process involved photographing a small piece of tartan ribbon on three different plates and through three different color filters--red, green, and blue-violet. The result was a colored photo with a range of different hues in it (See picture at top of page). This proved Thomas Young's three-color theory and it became the first reproducible full color photo.
Throughout the 1860's and 70's, photography shifted from just taking portraits of people to photographing social life all across the world. People documented the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the slum areas of Glasgow. In 1871, the photographic community came to another breakthrough.
Richard Leach Maddox was an English doctor who was one of the many photographers looking for a replacement for the wet plate, something that didn't require you to develop it right after you took the picture. People wanted to eliminate the need for portable dark rooms. Dr. Maddox suggested suspending silver bromide in a gelatin emulsion to produce a sort of 'dry plate' process. In 1871, he presented his plates to the public and within the decade (1878), the plates were being mass produced in factories all across Europe and the United States.
George Eastman was born in 1854 in Waterville, New York. His father owned a small business school and moved the whole family out to Rochester in 1860. However, Eastman's father died only two years later and Eastman had to drop out of high school at 14 to help his family. however, one of his sisters contracted polio and died when he was 16. He started as a messenger boy and eventually got a bookkeeping job at the Rochester Savings Bank. When Eastman was 24, he planned a trip to Saint Domingo and bought all of the photography equipment, however, he never took the trip.
He took his equipment and decided he wanted to find a way to make photography less bulky and easier for the every day person to enjoy. He had seen the advertisement of the 'dry plate' process in a British magazine and with the help of some of his friends, he created a gelatin-based paper film and a way to coat the dry plates. He resigned from his job and launched his tiny photography company in April of 1880. in 1885, he went to the patent office to get a patent for his roll-holder device that he and his friend had created, allowing cameras to be smaller and cheaper.
Eastman came up with the name of his new company, Kodak. In 1888, he launched the first Kodak camera. The slogan of the company was "You push the button, we do the rest." The cameras had 100 exposures on the one roll of film and were sent to the company after all 100 were used to be developed and sent back to the owner. In 1889, Eastman hired chemist Henry Reichenbach to develop a type of flexible film that could be more easily inserted into cameras. A small, $1 camera, the Brownie camera, was launched in 1900 and became very popular with kids and teens. All in all, George Eastman made several important additions to the photography community and started one of the most iconic photography companies that is still around today.
The collodion wet plate process--or "wet plate process"--allowed for lots of benefits. It had the ability of easy reproduction like the calotype, amazing clarity like a daguerreotype, and it allowed people to dramatically reduce the exposure time. It was also much cheaper to produce that calotypes and daguerreotypes. He published an article in The Chemist in 1851 and in 1852, he wrote and published A Manual of the Collodion Photographic Process. Unfortunately, Archer never patented any on his work until it was too late to make much of a profit off of and he died in the year 1857.
In March of 1819, André-Adolphe-Eugene-Disdéri (or Adolphe Disdéri for short) was born in Paris, France. Though he originally sought after the arts, he started out in the world of business after his father passed away and continued until he was in a very stable marriage. During the Revolution of 1848, him and his wife moved to Brest in the western part of France and opened a small photographic studio that produced daguerreotypes. He left his wife in charge of their studio and traveled to Nimes to begin using the wet plate process to photograph portraits for people as well as lots of other things. By 1854, Disdéri owned the largest photographic studio in Paris.
Around this time, people in the upper-middle class would use calling cards when attending parties. Disdéri came up with an idea for a camera that had four lenses and a divided septum that allowed the camera to capture multiple portraits on a single wet plate. The printed images, or "carte-de-viste", as they were patented as, allowed a person to have multiple poses and they were able to cut the carte-de-vistes apart and glue them onto their calling cards. A lot of the cards and portraitures had celebrities of higher classes on them, so they became extremely popular and collectable. These portraitures were also more affordable for people in the lower-middle class. Disdéri made a fortune from this patent after the portraitures became popular. However, by 1868, the carte-de-viste had passed and he didn't have any other advancements as large as them.
During the mid-1850's, a very important phenomenon was introduced. The idea of the stereoscope came into invention and popularity during this time. Stereoscopic images had the idea of making the two images merge together to make them appear 3D. Our eyes are sitting in two different places on our head and naturally see two images that are nearly identical. Our brain combined these two images, providing us with depth and spatial perception. The stereoscope attempts to do the same thing as your brain. Two images that are nearly identical are placed side-by-side, and when you see them, they look like one image that has space and depth to it, making the image appear 3D.
A British physician named Sir Charles Wheatstone created a predecessor for the stereoscope in 1838. It used a single sheet of paper until photography became advanced enough. Oliver Wendell Holmes, an American jurist, made the famous model of the stereoscope that we all recognize even today based on Wheatstone's model. The popularity of it skyrocketed when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert received a stereographic viewer at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851. The stereographic viewers were popular from the 1860's all the way to the 1930's when motion picture films were just beginning. They allowed people a glimpse at the world around them even if it was a thousand miles away. They would become even more popular after being displayed at The Great Exhibition in London in 1851.
The next advancement is probably the most important of all of them that happened in the 1800's. Pictures were clearly becoming very popular all over the world. Napoleon III, Queen Victoria, and Abraham Lincoln all had their pictures taken for various reasons. Here's the catch: no pictures to date had ever been made in color. A Scottish physicist by the name of James Clerk-Maxwell was about to change that.
From the time Maxwell was an adolescent, he showed a certain brilliance and was enrolled in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland when he was only 16 years old to pursue a career in optics and color research. After 3 years of study, he moved to Cambridge University's Trinity College and graduated in 1854. He taught at Trinity for a Time before moving to the physics department at Marischal College. This is where he met his wife, Katherine Mary Dewar. While he worked at Marischal, he experimented with all kinds of different theories, including electromagnetism and Thomas Young's three-color theory of light. He gained the help of his friend, Thomas Sutton, and they presented the world's first color photograph to the Royal Institute of London in 1861. The process involved photographing a small piece of tartan ribbon on three different plates and through three different color filters--red, green, and blue-violet. The result was a colored photo with a range of different hues in it (See picture at top of page). This proved Thomas Young's three-color theory and it became the first reproducible full color photo.
Throughout the 1860's and 70's, photography shifted from just taking portraits of people to photographing social life all across the world. People documented the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the slum areas of Glasgow. In 1871, the photographic community came to another breakthrough.
Richard Leach Maddox was an English doctor who was one of the many photographers looking for a replacement for the wet plate, something that didn't require you to develop it right after you took the picture. People wanted to eliminate the need for portable dark rooms. Dr. Maddox suggested suspending silver bromide in a gelatin emulsion to produce a sort of 'dry plate' process. In 1871, he presented his plates to the public and within the decade (1878), the plates were being mass produced in factories all across Europe and the United States.
George Eastman was born in 1854 in Waterville, New York. His father owned a small business school and moved the whole family out to Rochester in 1860. However, Eastman's father died only two years later and Eastman had to drop out of high school at 14 to help his family. however, one of his sisters contracted polio and died when he was 16. He started as a messenger boy and eventually got a bookkeeping job at the Rochester Savings Bank. When Eastman was 24, he planned a trip to Saint Domingo and bought all of the photography equipment, however, he never took the trip.
He took his equipment and decided he wanted to find a way to make photography less bulky and easier for the every day person to enjoy. He had seen the advertisement of the 'dry plate' process in a British magazine and with the help of some of his friends, he created a gelatin-based paper film and a way to coat the dry plates. He resigned from his job and launched his tiny photography company in April of 1880. in 1885, he went to the patent office to get a patent for his roll-holder device that he and his friend had created, allowing cameras to be smaller and cheaper.
Eastman came up with the name of his new company, Kodak. In 1888, he launched the first Kodak camera. The slogan of the company was "You push the button, we do the rest." The cameras had 100 exposures on the one roll of film and were sent to the company after all 100 were used to be developed and sent back to the owner. In 1889, Eastman hired chemist Henry Reichenbach to develop a type of flexible film that could be more easily inserted into cameras. A small, $1 camera, the Brownie camera, was launched in 1900 and became very popular with kids and teens. All in all, George Eastman made several important additions to the photography community and started one of the most iconic photography companies that is still around today.
As the 1800's started coming to a close, we see two more important pieces of photography history. The first involved then Stanford student, Arthur C. Pillsbury (and no, not the little doughboy..)
Arthur Pillsbury was always a very curious child and began experimenting when he was in his childhood, living in Auburn, California with his parents and his older brother. His parents taught him to question the impossible and look at the world in a new light. He did extremely well in school and ended up going to Stanford in 1893 for his major in Mechanical Engineering. His idea for his senior project, building a circuit panorama camera, was shot down by his advisor, claiming the design would not work. However, he finished the project in 1897 and turned in the completed circuit panorama camera. This camera allowed people to take a large image of an are, such as the landscape. Pillsbury took one of these on his trip to the Yukon to photograph the changing landscape. From 1898 to 1899, he photographed the opening mines and the transitions of the Native Americans living in the area.
In 1898, Reverend Hannibal Goodwin creates and patents the celluloid photographic film. Generally considered the first thermoplastic, it was very flexible and could be bent and shaped. This was perfect for putting on a roll inside a camera. Many people tried to use this film for motion picture, but the developed sheets were too brittle for motion picture. This is that iconic film reel look that you see on negatives.
The 19th century concludes and we move on to even more exciting innovations!
Arthur Pillsbury was always a very curious child and began experimenting when he was in his childhood, living in Auburn, California with his parents and his older brother. His parents taught him to question the impossible and look at the world in a new light. He did extremely well in school and ended up going to Stanford in 1893 for his major in Mechanical Engineering. His idea for his senior project, building a circuit panorama camera, was shot down by his advisor, claiming the design would not work. However, he finished the project in 1897 and turned in the completed circuit panorama camera. This camera allowed people to take a large image of an are, such as the landscape. Pillsbury took one of these on his trip to the Yukon to photograph the changing landscape. From 1898 to 1899, he photographed the opening mines and the transitions of the Native Americans living in the area.
In 1898, Reverend Hannibal Goodwin creates and patents the celluloid photographic film. Generally considered the first thermoplastic, it was very flexible and could be bent and shaped. This was perfect for putting on a roll inside a camera. Many people tried to use this film for motion picture, but the developed sheets were too brittle for motion picture. This is that iconic film reel look that you see on negatives.
The 19th century concludes and we move on to even more exciting innovations!