Part 1

THE Alumni Journal

Entered at the New York Post Office as second class matter.

VOL. II. No. 2.

February, 1895.

Contents.

“THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF PHOTOGRAPHY,” 29 By Prof. ARTHUR H. ELLIOTT, Ph.D., F.C.S.

EDITORIAL--THE ABILITY OF CONSTRUCTION, 41

NEW LITERATURE, 43

THE MOST RECENT WORK, 47

NOTES HERE AND THERE, 48

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION, 48

COLLEGE NOTES, 49

SENIOR CLASS NOTES, 50

JUNIOR NOTES, 51

MEDICINE AND PHARMACY, 52 By N. H. MARTIN, F.L.S., F.R.M.S.

OFFICINAL OR OFFICIAL, 55

PUBLISHED BY THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF THE COLLEGE OF PHARMACY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

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THE Alumni Journal

PUBLISHED BY THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF THE COLLEGE OF PHARMACY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

Vol. II. New York, February, 1895. No. 2.

“THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF PHOTOGRAPHY.”

BY PROF. ARTHUR H. ELLIOTT, PH.D., F.C.S.

The topic of my lecture this evening is one of my old hobbies, so that if I am a little prolix sometimes you must pardon me. It is something in which I have been more or less interested for the last twenty-five years, and, like most of our hobbies, we sometimes drive them to death, to the discomfort of other people.

The fundamental ideas upon which photography is based are very old--older than the Christian era, certainly. They depend upon two facts: First--that light, in passing through a small opening, produces an inverted image in a dark chamber. Imagine, for instance, that you are in a dark chamber, outside of which is an object; that there is in the chamber a small hole a sixteenth or an eighth of an inch in diameter, and that you have in this dark chamber a piece of paper. Upon that paper you will get a picture of the object opposite the hole. That was known a long time ago. The other fact is that certain salts of silver, notably the chloride, iodide and bromide of silver, are sensitive to light and become blackened by light, was known to the Egyptians. The action of light upon colored bodies must have been known to the very earliest observers among men. The bronzing of the human skin under the tropical sun must have been noted by every one; and it is on record, in the most ancient annals of the human race, that men--the fair men from the North--when they went to the tropics, returned with tanned skins. Ptolemy, over two thousand years ago, noted that beeswax was bleached in sunlight, and the old Greeks noted that the gems which we call opal and amethyst lost their colors when exposed to sunshine. These are some of the first and most rudimentary notions upon the actions of light, and we have no definite statements about making pictures without light. The Chinese have a tradition--and they have a great many curious ones that are often founded on facts--that the sun makes pictures upon the ice of lakes and rivers.

A Frenchman, named Fontamen, wrote an imaginary voyage to a strange country, and among other things he said that objects were reflected upon the water and when the water was frozen the images were retained. So this idea of certain surfaces being capable of receiving impressions by means of light was very ancient. There was another Frenchman, named Devique Delaroche, who made a still more curious statement. In 1760 he wrote a book in which his hero is wrecked upon a strange coast, and the spirits of that place showed him how to make pictures, as he called it, “painted by nature.” It is not quite sure what he means, but his words are something like these: “You know,” says his guide, “that rays of light are reflected from different bodies and form pictures. The spirits have sought to fix these pictures, and have a subtle matter by which these pictures are formed in the twinkling of an eye. They coat canvas with this peculiar matter, and hold it before the object.” The manner of holding it is not stated. “The canvas is then removed to a dark place and in an hour the impression is dry and you have a picture, the more precious in that no art can imitate its truthfulness.” These words were written one hundred and fifty years ago. This, as far as we know, was purely imagination; yet the idea--the germ of photography--was there. We shall presently see that this flight of fancy on the part of Delaroche was very near the truth, and foretold what has since become possible, and only a very short time after he said it.

As time went on and observations of men became more definite, we obtain records of facts that were noted with regard to the action of light upon certain chemical compounds. You know those old alchemists had queer ideas, one in regard to their elixir of life, and another that they could turn the baser metals into gold. They discovered a material in the silver mines of the Hartz Mountains which they called “luna cornea.” The word luna was at that time applied to silver. Luna cornea was horn silver--what we know to-day as silver chloride. They noted that when this was first brought from the mine it was white and that after it had been exposed to the air and the sunlight it turned black, and they also noticed that it was only the surface that turned black--that if they scraped the surface off it was white underneath. They also found that if they kept it in the mine it did not get black. This observation was made about 1550 by Frobrishes, one of the early workers in chemistry; but you must remember that they were not studying the action of light upon this substance. Their sole object was the turning of the baser metals into gold, and therefore they did not pay much attention to this idea, although this fact was placed on record.

Some time after this we learn that a German named Schultze made copies of drawings with a mixture of chalk and silver nitrate spread on a level surface. The time of this is doubtful, but it was probably about the year 1700. He passed the light, as he says, through translucent paper (made translucent with oil or wax), and objects placed upon the paper left a white impression on the mixture of chalk and silver nitrate--or, as he called it, “lunar caustic.” This was in about 1700, as I said. About fifty years after this time (and indeed it was a little more, it was seventy years, in 1777) Scheele, the Swedish apothecary’s assistant, took up the examination of this horn silver. It seemed to him well worthy of study; and as the result of his work he obtained the first germs that led to the art of photography. But before Scheele could have prosecuted his researches, and before photography could make any important advances, there were two other discoveries in science--and in optics particularly--that had to be made. The first of these was the decomposition of white light, by Sir Isaac Newton, by which he obtained the prismatic colors; that is to say, the colors that we know as violet, indigo, blue, green, and so on down to the red. That was the first step. The next step was the discovery by Baptiste Porter, an Italian, in Naples, which preceded the discovery of Newton (it was about 1590), that a small opening in a dark chamber produced an inverted image on the wall of the chamber. So that between 1590 and 1666 Baptiste Porter and Sir Isaac Newton paved the way for the researches of Scheele upon the action of light upon this simple substance, as they called it, “luna cornea” or chloride of silver. Now Scheele, therefore, at his time, 1777, knew of the discovery of the prismatic colors, or the decomposition of white light by Sir Isaac Newton, and he made the experiment of submitting this horn silver or silver chloride to the action of light after the light had been passed through a prism and he found the light as we know it to consist of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Placing the silver chloride in this band of colors, he discovered the important fact that in the red rays the silver chloride received no change--that there was no change made in it. But, as he got along toward the other end of the spectrum, and got into the green and the blue and the indigo and the violet, he found that the color of the silver chloride changed much more rapidly, and he found that the most active in its effect upon the silver chloride were the blue and violet rays. In addition to this fact he found that the light discolored the silver chloride. Scheele still further proved that the silver chloride was decomposed by the light, and that chlorine gas, or, as he called it, dephlogisticated marine acid gas, was produced. He became acquainted with this previously from his experiments on the mineral braunstein with muriatic acid. So that when he perceived the odor of the chlorine from the decomposition of the silver chloride, he recognized the gas at once, and he says: “When this silver chloride turns black it gives out chlorine,” and that was a very important fact. At the red end of the spectrum he found there was little or no effect upon the silver chloride. This was the principle of the camera obscura, and the principle of the camera obscura is the principle of the photographic camera to-day. Practically the photographic camera consists of a dark box, with a hole at one end and at this end there is a place to receive an image. Instead of having a lens there in the front of the camera, as was formerly the practice, it is perfectly possible to get the picture with a small opening, say an eighth or sixteenth of an inch in diameter, and, furthermore, that is the most perfect picture you can get in a camera--a picture without a lens. Now, that is a strange statement, and perhaps in these days it may appear a little wild; but (exhibiting a photo about 5 × 7) there is a picture made with an opening not larger than a pinhole, and it is a good deal better than many of the pictures taken by the amateurs to-day. This opening being so small necessitates a good deal of time in the action of the light upon the sensitive silver salts behind, and that is the object of placing the lens there. By placing the lens here, instead of having a small opening, you make a larger opening which collects the light in the same manner, brings it to the focus and then the rays diverge again and you get the picture. Now, the rays as they pass through the opening without a lens, begin to diverge as soon as they are in the camera, but with a lens there they are brought together first and then cross and then you get the picture. That is the first step, then, in photography, the production of images by the camera obscura--and that is all the photographic camera consists of--a modification of it. Now, when the facts ascertained by Scheele, _i.e._, the action of light upon silver chloride--turning it black and producing gas (and by the way Scheele never found out what this gas was and to-day it is a matter of controversy and a problem among chemists)--with the facts ascertained by Scheele, in regard to the action of light Thomas Wedgewood and Vueder made pictures, in 1802. These pictures were very peculiar. They spread upon paper and upon glass plates that had some gummy material upon them silver chloride--as a precipitate, and then they set their subjects up, so as to get a profile shadow with a strong light upon the surface. Now, where the light passed, of course they got a black mark upon the silver chloride, but the silhouette of the face was in white. Now, that was very remarkable, because they got some very remarkable pictures of which drawings were made. They were white silhouettes on a black background, but remember that the pictures that were thus made, the white silhouettes (if I may use the term) were made by the action of some light. If you wanted to copy them you had to copy them out of the light; otherwise the whole mass would get black, and that was the difficulty. In other words, the white impression could only be examined by candle or some other weak light, and they ultimately became shrouded in darkness and were lost--so we have now none of those pictures.

While they were experimenting in England, a man named Niepse, a Frenchman, was at work upon the same subject--the action of light upon various materials, but in a somewhat different direction. In 1813, or probably before that time, he discovered that certain kinds of bitumen were soluble in oil of lavender, and that when you exposed these pieces of bitumen to some light the oil of lavender would not dissolve them any more. He conceived the idea (how, is not on record), but he thought that if he could coat plates with this bitumen and then expose them to light in a camera he could get a picture upon this bitumen, and where the light had acted the bitumen would be insoluble in oil of lavender. Where the light had not acted that he could dissolve it out. He proceeded to do this, and succeeded in getting pictures upon metal plates. He then, afterwards, etched the plates and thus got a perfect drawing or picture. So he used it simply as a means to produce a picture by etching. Now, understand, using the camera, he obtained an impression upon metal plates coated with bitumen. After exposing the plates in the camera he washed them in oil of lavender and then an etching fluid, and cut the impression into the matter and then they were printed. Some of these pictures are still in existence, they say. I have never seen any of them. After a time the plates were cleaned, and by the help of an etcher’s tools or an engraver’s tools they were cut still deeper and made very good engraving plates; so that his object was not simply to etch them but to produce plates for engraving.

While this was going on Herschel made an important discovery in 1819, and that was that chloride and bromide and iodide of silver were not soluble when blackened by light. He found that after you had exposed these materials to the light--this silver iodide, bromide or chloride--and had washed all these with hypophosphite of sodium, they would not dissolve. That was important. That made it possible to preserve the silhouette pictures devised or discovered by Wedgewood and Vueder. Therefore, after exposing the plates in the camera, as did Niepse, the Frenchman, he washed them in a solution of hypophosphite of sodium. That took off the chloride of silver that was not acted upon by the light and he preserved the pictures. Some of the first pictures that he made were rather curious. I have not one of his original pictures; I wish I had, but I have a picture made in the same manner. He took a piece of paper and saturated it with salt (he said that he used Bristol drying paper, which was a peculiar paper, made at that time in England). This was soaked in chloride of sodium or common salt, and then it was dipped and had flowed over it nitrate of silver. Therefore he had in the pores of the paper chloride of silver in very intimate contact with the paper. Then he took such objects as ferns and pieces of paper, cut it in various shapes, and laid it on the paper. That produced such an effect as where the objects had laid they had the white impression. If you took this out in the sunlight it would all get black. But he made this important discovery and thus preserved the picture. This was the first photograph made. We do that to-day, and produce other pictures with various other compounds, but I will speak of that later.