International photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

Twenty-eight T h INTERNATIONAL PHiOTOGRAPHER December, 1934 FROM ARISTOTLE TO EASTMAN (Continued from Page 16) negatives are "fixed" today, and the light areas of the scene in front of the camera appeared mercury-white, whereas the dark areas appeared in the black metallic silver of the plate's surface. After Daguerre's first success in recording permanent camera pictures, a newly devised portrait lens and the addition of bromine to the iodine helped to speed up the process of photography — even had sped it up, by the middle forties, to the point where Miss Draper could be photographed in ten minutes! Fox Talbot, in England, took the next step forward. He made pictures on paper coated with silver iodide instead of on silver treated with iodine, and he used no mercury in development. Therefore the image was a negative one instead of Daguerre's positive image, and it was possible by an extremely long exposure through the paper negatives to print positives — just like the prints that are made from Kodak negatives today. Glass became the accepted photographic medium after the English sculptor, Scott Archer, had invented the wet collodion process in 1851. That method was used practically exclusively for making negatives from 1860 to 1880. Photography as practiced today may be said to be evolved mainly from the work of Wedgwood and Fox Talbot. Daguerreotypy ceased in the early eighteen fifties. Eastman An amateur photographer in the twenty years preceding 1880 was a queer person: for he had to think it fun to go out on a photographic expedition carrying a bulky camera, a heavy tripod on which to rest his camera for the necessary long exposures, burdensome and breakable plates, a "dark tent" for loading and sensitizing and then developing his plates, a nitrate bath, and a water container. This was because plates had to be used wet in the camera. Difficult. Messy. It was at this stage of the development of photography that the prophet of modern photography entered. George Eastman was a bank clerk in Rochester with an active interest that turned to amateur photography — amateur photography of just the cumbersome sort that has been described. In an English magazine George Eastman read a discussion of the possibilities for gelatine dry plates to supplant wet plates. This would make photography a simpler thing. Eastman's inventive turn of mind was set off in that direction, and in a small hired room over a shop he spent his nights experimenting to make dry plates. He devised an apparatus to coat dry plates mechanically, and in 1880 he began to manufacture and sell them. The Search for Film Dry plates "scrapped" the dark tent, the nitrate bath, and other complications of the field equipment, and made results somewhat less dependent on skill. But plates, whether wet or dry, were heavy and breakable. Professional photographers remained by far the largest customers of the new dry plate industry. Further simplification was necessary if photography were to be made the easy operation which, even then, was in Eastman's mind. The need of amateur photography seemed to be a film, which would do away with glass plates altogether. The first step in that direction was a roll of paper on which the light-sensitive emulsion was coated. After development, the roll was greased and printed through. But this, again, was not the perfect solution that Eastman envisioned. The Eastman "stripping film" was devised — a temporary paper base coated with soluble gelatine which in turn was coated with the sensitive gelatine emulsion. When the negative was immersed in water the image could be stripped off and transferred to a transparent gelatine skin ; but the process was delicate and had to be undertaken by expert hands. Meanwhile the roll film idea had evolved a new type of camera. The first Kodak appeared in 1888, the invention of Eastman, who also coined the name "Kodak." This first Kodak took round pictures 2^ inches in diameter and was loaded for 100 exposures. Compared to the folding pocket instruments of today it was a crude affair ; but compared to the burden of equipment which only a few years before had confronted amateur photographers it was a miracle of achievement. For the picture-taking itself no technical skill was required. "You press the button, we do the rest," put the simplicity of operation into a phrase. The "rest" included unloading and reloading the Kodak back at the factory, developing the roll of film, stripping and mounting it, and printing the pictures — in addition, of course, to having manufactured the film and the photographic printing paper in the first place. The discovery of a transparent, flexible film base to supplant the paper rolls long eluded capture. But in 1889, after years of experiment and research, Eastman and his staff succeeded in making commercially practicable the present celluloid base by dissolving nitrated cotton in alcohol. When it was dried and sensitively coated, this became the film with which Kodakers have long been familiar. Subsequent Improvements and — the Movies Daylight loading for cameras was patented in 1891 and was put on the market the following spring. Daylight developing, introduced in 1902, completed the present Kodak system of photography except for refinements. By also coating the non-emulsion side with gelatine the film in 1903 was made easier to handle because of its non-curling properties. Verichrome Film, a double-coated material introduced in 1931, is proving very advantageous to amateur photographers by lengthening the snapshot day. Super-sensitive panchromatic film, likewise introduced in 1931 by the Eastman Kodak Company, has greatly increased the possibilities for photography and cinematography under artificial light. The discovery of film not only revolutionized photography, but also made motion pictures possible. Edison, struggling in his West Orange laboratory to devise a machine which would reproduce motion visually, heard of the Eastman discovery in Rochester and sent his famous assistant, Dickson, to investigate it. Dickson took a strip of the new transparent and flexible substance back to West Orange and showed it to Edison. The man who was to become the most famous of the motion picture pioneers looked at it for a moment, then said : "That's it. We've got it. Now work like hell." The purchase memorandum for that first strip of film is still in the files of the Eastman Kodak Companv, dated September 2nd, 1889. The launching of the movies as a commercial institution, which came several years later, established one of the world's enormous industries. One indication of the motion picture industry's magnitude is the fact that the Eastman Kodak Company's annual production of motion picture film in the United States alone amounts to 200,000 miles. X-ray photography, another major photographic dePlease mention The International Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.