Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

Reddish brown image. { White indigo Blue positive image. { Campeachy wood Red positive image. These are only a few of the instances in which actions of this kind have been observed. It is remarkable that the order of the first two columns in this table may be inverted without changing the result. Thus, instead of exposing iodide of silver to the light and developing the image with gallic acid, one may expose a paper saturated with gallic acid solution, and develop with iodide of potassium and nitrate of silver. The first reaction noted in the table deserves some remark: it is not peculiar to paper, but is common to most organic materials, such as albumen, collodion starch, 613fabrics, and indeed to organic matters in general, provided they are not of a black colour. Tartaric acid, sulphate of quinine, and nitrate of uranium increase this sensibility. The paper which has been impressed preserves its undeveloped image for a prolonged period if kept in darkness; and it has been found that one piece of paper can impart the image to another by simple contact in the dark. What is still more remarkable, the invisible impressions on a piece of paper may be transferred to another not in contact by merely placing it opposite the first, and separated by an interval of a quarter of an inch. No satisfactory explanation of these phenomena has been advanced, but many conjectures have been made. One of these supposes that some unknown intermediate products are formed, which are, in the case of the latent image on paper, very oxidizable; but in the case of silver salts, &c., very reducible, so that the addition of a silver salt in the first case, and of organic matter in the second, only completes the phenomena by ordinary chemical action. Niepce de Saint-Victor, however, found that a surface of freshly broken porcelain alone will receive a latent impression from light, and will reduce in those places sensitive salts of silver. He believes that the light in these latent images is simply stored up, and that its energy remains fixed to the surfaces until the occasion of its producing a chemical action. When a pure solar spectrum is made to fall upon paper rendered sensitive by silver salts, the effect is observed to be greatest near the Fraunhofer line H (No. 1, Plate XVII.), and it is prolonged with decreasing intensity beyond the violet end of the spectrum, while towards the other end it terminates about the line F. When other sensitive substances are used, the range of photographic power in the spectrum is modified. It has been found that when a daguerrotype plate which has been impressed by the light in the camera is afterwards exposed to the red or yellow rays of the spectrum, it loses its property of condensing the mercurial vapours. This destruction of photographic impression by red or yellow light has a practical application of great importance, for it permits the processes of preparing paper and plates to be carried on in a laboratory lighted by windows having yellow or red, instead of the ordinary colourless, glass. Thus we see that it is by no means the whole of the solar rays which are concerned in producing photographic images; nay, there are some which even tend to destroy the impressions produced by others. The fact that it is not the light, but only certain rays in the sunbeam, may be proved very conclusively by an experiment with a glass bulb filled with a mixture of equal volumes of hydrogen and chlorine gases. When such a bulb is exposed to the light of the sun or of burning magnesium, which is made to reach it by passing through a piece of red glass, no explosion takes place; but if the bulb be covered only with a piece of blue or violet glass, the explosion is produced just as quickly as if it were exposed to the unaltered rays. The visible spectrum obtained in the experiment described on page 318 is far from constituting the only radiations which reach us from the sun. For invisible beams of heat, less refrangible than the red rays, are found beyond the red end of the spectrum; and another invisible spectrum stretches far beyond the violet end, formed of rays recognized only by their chemical activity. It is these which effect photographic actions, and though they are in part more highly refrangible than any of the rays producing the visible spectrum, a large portion are refracted within its limits, so that the maximum of photographic action in a spectrum is usually near 614the violet end. When we wish to examine the spectrum of the heat rays, it is necessary to replace the glass prism by one made of rock salt, for glass absorbs these heat rays. It also intercepts a great part of the most refrangible rays; for when a prism of quartz is substituted for the glass one, the spectrum becomes greatly extended at the violet end. The dark Fraunhofer lines which cross the visible spectrum are represented also in great numbers in the invisible spectrum: in photographs of the ultra-violet rays more than 700 dark lines have been counted. It has been proposed to employ quartz lenses in the photographic camera; but there is reason to believe that the increased transparency of such lenses for the chemical rays would be counterbalanced by certain disadvantages attending the use of quartz. The beauty of the images which are formed in the camera obscura long ago gave rise to the desire of fixing them permanently. We know how perfectly photography has already satisfied that desire, so far as the forms are concerned. The very perfection of the results obtained in this direction increases our regret at our inability to fix also the colours, and secure the picture, not in grey or brown tones of reduced silver, but with all the glowing hues of nature. An observation made by Herschel, Davy, and others, seemed at one time to hold out hopes of a possible realization of chromatic photographs. It was noticed that the images developed upon chloride of silver, of the different parts of the solar spectrum, partook somewhat of the colours of the rays which produced them. Edmond Becquerel made a plate of polished silver, placed in dilute hydrochloric acid, form the positive pole of a battery. The plate thus became coated with an extremely thin layer of chloride of silver, which, as its thickness augmented, exhibited the series of colours due to the action of light on thin films. The operation was stopped when the plate had become of a violet colour for the second time; it was then washed, dried, polished with the finest tripoli, and heated to 212° F., the whole of these operations having been carried on in the dark. When this plate was exposed for about two hours to the solar spectrum, fixed by proper appliances which counteracted the apparent motion of the sun, the luminous rays were found to have impressed the plate with their respective colours. The yellow was somewhat pale, but the red, green, and violet were exhibited in their true tints. A theoretical explanation has been advanced, which supposes that yellow light, for example, renders the surface of the plate on which it falls peculiarly capable of receiving and transmitting vibrations corresponding to those of yellow light. Just as a stretched cord responds to its own musical note, the modified plate gives back, out of all the vibrations which fall upon it in ordinary light, only those of which it has itself acquired the periodicity. But since the plate has not lost its sensitiveness to take on other rates of vibrations, it receives other impressions, which first weaken and then overcome the former, and, therefore, the colour necessarily vanishes. This kind of difficulty seems to be a necessary concomitant of every attempt in this direction; and all the hopes founded on results yet obtained have been disappointed by the rapid fading of the images. The comparative cheapness and convenience of Talbot’s process, and especially the facilities which it afforded for the multiplication of proofs, gave an immense impulse to photographic art. But the irregular and fibrous structure of paper prevented the attainment of the beautiful sharpness of outline and clear definition of detail which the plates of Daguerre presented. Sir John Herschel suggested the use of glass plates coated 615with sensitive photographic films, and Niepce de Saint-Victor succeeded in fixing upon glass layers of albumen (white of egg) containing the silver salts, a method which is still used to some extent. The art received, however, its greatest stimulus from the improvements which ensued on the application of collodion to this purpose. Collodion (κολλα, glue; in allusion to its adhesiveness) is the name which has been given to a solution in ether of gun-cotton, or of a substance nearly allied to it. Its employment was suggested by Le Grey of Paris, but the late Mr. Archer was the first to carry the idea into practice, and the process which he described in “The Chemist,” in 1851, is virtually that which is now almost universally adopted. This process has now been tested, for nearly a quarter of a century, by the united experience of photographers all over the world, and it is agreed that it is surpassed by no other, for it secures every quality which a photograph can possess.[13] The minor details of the method can be, and are, infinitely varied; scarcely two experienced photographers will be found working the process in identically the same manner throughout. Before giving an outline of the collodion process, it may be well to say something respecting the chief instrument of photography—the camera. 13. (1875) But see below, page 541. Fig. 308. The ordinary photographic camera is almost too well known to require description. In its simplest form, Fig. 308, it is merely a rectangular box, in front of which is placed the lens, which slides in a tube, that its position may be adjusted so as to bring the rays to a focus on the surface of a piece of ground glass at the opposite end. This glass is fitted into a light frame, which slides in grooves, so that it can be raised vertically out of its position, and replaced by another frame, B, which contains a recess for the reception for the sensitive plate, and a sliding screen which protects it from light until the right moment. When this frame is placed in the camera, the sensitive surface occupies the same position as that of the ground glass, and the sliding screen is drawn up the moment before the operator removes from the front of the lens a cap which he places there after adjusting the focus. The sliding screen is usually made with a narrow strip at the lower part, joined to the rest by a hinge, so that when it has been drawn up it may be retained in its position, and placed out of the way, by being folded down horizontally. There is commonly provision for two plates in one frame, the slides, &c., being doubled, and the plates placed back to 616back, as shown at B, Fig. 308. The camera is usually made in two parts, as shown in the figure, that at the back sliding within the other, so that a wider range for adjustment is obtained, and the same camera may even be used with lenses of different focal lengths. Many improvements have been made in the camera, by which it has been rendered more portable, and capable of more adjustments to suit varying circumstances. Fig. 309 represents a “bellows” or folding camera, which appears to supply every requirement for the studio. It is copied from Messrs. Negretti and Zambra’s catalogue, as are also the other figures of photographic apparatus here given. Fig. 307 represents a camera for taking stereoscopic views, fitted with two lenses, so that the two views are taken simultaneously on one plate. Fig. 309. No piece of apparatus used by the photographer is of