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Robert Cornelius

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129-482: Robert Cornelius ( / k ɔːr ˈ n iː l i ə s / ; March 1, 1809 – August 10, 1893) was an American photographer and pioneer in the history of photography . His daguerreotype self-portrait taken in 1839 is generally accepted as the first known photographic portrait of a person taken in the United States, and a significant achievement for self-portraiture . He operated some of the earliest photography studios in

258-455: A Manchester cotton mill in 1806. In 1901, studies of the defoliant effect of leaking gas pipes led to the discovery that ethylene is a plant hormone . Throughout the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th, the gas was manufactured by the gasification of coal. Later in the 19th century, natural gas began to replace coal gas, first in the US, and then in other parts of the world. In

387-489: A silversmith before opening a lamp-manufacturing company. He attended private school as a youth and took a particular interest in chemistry . In 1831, he began working for his father and specialized in silver plating and metal polishing. In late September 1839, soon after the daguerreotype was publicized, Joseph Saxton took a picture of the Philadelphia Central High School , which is considered one of

516-480: A subtractive color image. Maxwell's method of taking three separate filtered black-and-white photographs continued to serve special purposes into the 1950s and beyond, and Polachrome , an "instant" slide film that used the Autochrome's additive principle, was available until 2003, but the few color print and slide films still being made in 2015 all use the multilayer emulsion approach pioneered by Kodachrome. In 1957,

645-443: A bladder … and tied close, may be carried away, and kept some days, and being afterwards pressed gently through a small pipe into the flame of a candle, will take fire, and burn at the end of the pipe as long as the bladder is gently pressed to feed the flame, and when taken from the candle after it is so lighted, it will continue burning till there is no more air left in the bladder to supply the flame." Lowther had basically discovered

774-529: A camera obscura device. He did not manage to properly fix his images and abandoned the project after hearing of the Daguerreotype process in 1839 and did not properly publish any of his findings. He reportedly referred to the technique as "photographie" (in French) as early as 1833, also helped by a suggestion of De Mello. Some extant photographic contact prints are believed to have been made in circa 1833 and kept in

903-442: A course of lectures on chemistry , at Manchester , in which he showed the mode of producing gas from coal, and the facility and advantage of its use. Dr Henry analysed the composition and investigated the properties of carburetted hydrogen gas (i.e. methane). His experiments were numerous and accurate and made upon a variety of substances; having obtained the gas from wood, peat , different kinds of coal, oil, wax, etc., he quantified

1032-407: A facsimile of the image. The mirror represents images faithfully, but retains none; our canvas reflects them no less faithfully, but retains them all. This impression of the image is instantaneous. The canvas is then removed and deposited in a dark place. An hour later the impression is dry, and you have a picture the more precious in that no art can imitate its truthfulness." De la Roche thus imagined

1161-680: A factory for the production of lighting gas was constructed near the Obvodny Canal , using pit coal brought in by ship from Cardiff ; and 204 gas lamps were ceremonially lit in St. Petersburg on 27 September 1839. Over the next 10 years, their numbers almost quadrupled, to reach 800. By the middle of the 19th century, the central streets and buildings of the capital were illuminated: the Palace Square , Bolshaya and Malaya Morskaya streets, Nevsky and Tsarskoselsky Avenues, Passage Arcade, Noblemen's Assembly,

1290-464: A filter of a yellowish-orange color was required to keep the photograph from coming out excessively blue. Although necessary, the filter had the effect of reducing the amount of light that was absorbed. Another drawback was that the image could only be enlarged so much before the many dots that made up the image would become apparent. Competing screen plate products soon appeared, and film-based versions were eventually made. All were expensive, and until

1419-467: A fixer, because the highly acclaimed scientist Davy had already tried and failed. Apparently the article was not noted by Niépce or Daguerre, and by Talbot only after he had developed his own processes. French balloonist, professor and inventor Jacques Charles is believed to have captured fleeting negative photograms of silhouettes on light-sensitive paper at the start of the 19th century, prior to Wedgwood. Charles died in 1823 without having documented

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1548-578: A free gift. Complete instructions were made public on 19 August 1839. Known as the daguerreotype process, it was the most common commercial process until the late 1850s when it was superseded by the collodion process . French-born Hércules Florence developed his own photographic technique in 1832 or 1833 in Brazil, with some help of pharmacist Joaquim Corrêa de Mello (1816–1877). Looking for another method to copy graphic designs he captured their images on paper treated with silver nitrate as contact prints or in

1677-500: A gas lighting with copper apparatuses and chandeliers of ink , brass and crystal , reportedly one of the first such public installations of gas lighting in the region, enhanced as a triumphal arch for the city gate for a royal visit of Charles XIV John of Sweden in 1820. By 1823, numerous towns and cities throughout Britain were lit by gas. Gas light cost up to 75% less than oil lamps or candles, which helped to accelerate its development and deployment. By 1859, gas lighting

1806-501: A gas-filled bladder attached to a jet. He would use this to walk home at night. After seeing how well this worked he decided to light his home with gas. In 1797, Murdoch installed gas lighting in his new home as well as the workshop in which he worked. “This work was of a large scale, and he next experimented to find better ways of producing, purifying, and burning the gas.” The foundation had been laid for companies to start producing gas and other inventors to start playing with ways of using

1935-505: A large number of positive prints by simple contact printing . The calotype had yet another distinction compared to other early photographic processes, in that the finished product lacked fine clarity due to its translucent paper negative. This was seen as a positive attribute for portraits because it softened the appearance of the human face . Talbot patented this process, which greatly limited its adoption, and spent many years pressing lawsuits against alleged infringers. He attempted to enforce

2064-428: A method for purifying coal gas by means of the chemical action of ammoniacal gas. Another plan was devised by Reuben Phillips, of Exeter , who patented the purification of coal gas by the use of dry lime . G. Holworthy, in 1818, patented a method of purifying it by passing the gas, in a highly condensed state, through iron retorts heated to a dark red. In 1820, Swedish inventor Johan Patrik Ljungström had developed

2193-404: A mirror-like silver-surfaced plate that had been fumed with iodine vapor, which reacted with the silver to form a coating of silver iodide . As with the bitumen process, the result appeared as a positive when it was suitably lit and viewed. Exposure times were still impractically long until Daguerre made the pivotal discovery that an invisibly slight or "latent" image produced on such a plate by

2322-650: A more efficient alternative to his original hot salt water method. In 1837, mineralist-writer Franz von Kobell shot finely detailed salt-paper negatives of different perspectives of the Munich Frauenkirche and other local buildings. Kobell revealed his work in 1839, together with Carl August von Steinheil . The "Steinheil method" produced pictures with a diameter of 4 cm, and negatives were rephotographed to create positive versions. Talbot's early silver chloride "sensitive paper" experiments required camera exposures of an hour or more. In 1841, Talbot invented

2451-480: A mosaic of tiny color filters overlaid on the emulsion and view the results through an identical mosaic. If the individual filter elements were small enough, the three primary colors of red, blue, and green would blend together in the eye and produce the same additive color synthesis as the filtered projection of three separate photographs. Autochrome plates had an integral mosaic filter layer with roughly five million previously dyed potato grains per square inch added to

2580-402: A much brighter light than natural gas or water gas . Illuminating gas was much less toxic than other forms of coal gas, but less could be produced from a given quantity of coal. The experiments with distilling coal were described by John Clayton in 1684. George Dixon's pilot plant exploded in 1760, setting back the production of illuminating gas a few years. The first commercial application was in

2709-482: A much shorter exposure could be "developed" to full visibility by mercury fumes. This brought the required exposure time down to a few minutes under optimum conditions. A strong hot solution of common salt served to stabilize or fix the image by removing the remaining silver iodide. On 7 January 1839, this first complete practical photographic process was announced at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, and

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2838-425: A pencil produced a contour line on a plate within a few minutes. A camera lucida is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists . The camera lucida projects an optical image of the subject being viewed, on the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist sees both scene and drawing surface simultaneously, as in a photographic double exposure. This allows the artist to duplicate key points of

2967-493: A performance, or having to light each candle individually. "It was easier to light a row of gas jets than a greater quantity of candles high in the air." Theatres also no longer needed to worry about wax dripping on the actors during a show. Gas lighting also had an effect on the actors. As the stage was brighter, they could now use less make-up and their motions did not have to be as exaggerated. Half-lit stages had become fully lit stages. Production companies were so impressed with

3096-481: A process for making glass plates with an albumen emulsion; the Langenheim brothers of Philadelphia and John Whipple and William Breed Jones of Boston also invented workable negative-on-glass processes in the mid-1840s. In 1851, English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process . Photographer and children's author Lewis Carroll used this process. Carroll refers to the process as "Talbotype" in

3225-589: A process that made use of a special substance in combination with the qualities of a mirror, rather than the camera obscura. The dark place in which the pictures dried suggests that he thought about the light sensitivity of the material, but he attributed the effect to its viscous nature. In 1777, the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele was studying the more intrinsically light-sensitive silver chloride and determined that light darkened it by disintegrating it into microscopic dark particles of metallic silver. Of greater potential usefulness, Scheele found that ammonia dissolved

3354-555: A set of three color-filtered black-and-white photographs in color without having to project them, and for using them to make full-color prints on paper. The first widely used method of color photography was the Autochrome plate, a process inventors and brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière began working on in the 1890s and commercially introduced in 1907. It was based on one of Louis Duclos du Haroun's ideas: instead of taking three separate photographs through color filters, take one through

3483-510: A silver nitrate solution. Attempts to preserve the results with their "distinct tints of brown or black, sensibly differing in intensity" failed. It is unclear when Wedgwood's experiments took place. He may have started before 1790; James Watt wrote a letter to Thomas Wedgwood's father Josiah Wedgwood to thank him "for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments". This letter (now lost)

3612-504: A small opening onto an opposite surface. This principle may have been known and used in prehistoric times. The earliest known written record of the camera obscura is to be found in the 4th century BCE, in two different places in parallel: by Aristotle in Greece and by Mozi in China. Alhazen (or Ibn al-Haytham) is said to be the first that actually built a camera obscura. Until the 16th century

3741-672: A stereoscope with lenses and a binocular camera in 1844. He presented two stereoscopic self portraits made by John Adamson in March 1849. A stereoscopic portrait of Adamson in the University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, dated "circa 1845', may be one of these sets. A stereoscopic daguerreotype portrait of Michael Faraday in Kingston College's Wheatstone collection and on loan to Bradford National Media Museum, dated "circa 1848", may be older. A practical means of color photography

3870-468: A team led by Russell A. Kirsch at the National Institute of Standards and Technology developed a binary digital version of an existing technology, the wirephoto drum scanner, so that alphanumeric characters, diagrams, photographs and other graphics could be transferred into digital computer memory . One of the first photographs scanned was a picture of Kirsch's infant son Walden. The resolution

3999-466: A ubiquitous everyday practice around the world. The coining of the word "photography" is usually attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839. It is based on the Greek φῶς ( phōs ; genitive phōtos ), meaning "light", and γραφή ( graphê ), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing of light". A natural phenomenon, known as camera obscura or pinhole image, can project a (reversed) image through

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4128-659: A variety of forms and with great brilliance at the front of his factory in Birmingham. In 1808 he constructed an apparatus, applicable for several uses, for Benjamin Cooke , a manufacturer of brass tubes, gilt toys, and other articles. In 1808, Murdoch presented to the Royal Society a paper entitled "Account of the Application of Gas from Coal to Economical Purposes" in which he described his successful application of coal gas to light

4257-430: A very broad interpretation of his patent, earning himself the ill will of photographers who were using the related glass-based processes later introduced by other inventors, but he was eventually defeated. Nonetheless, Talbot's developed-out silver halide negative process is the basic technology used by chemical film cameras today. Hippolyte Bayard had also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so

4386-497: Is believed to have been the first person to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. He originally wanted to capture the images of a camera obscura, but found they were too faint to have an effect upon the silver nitrate solution that was recommended to him as a light-sensitive substance. Wedgwood did manage to copy painted glass plates and captured shadows on white leather, as well as on paper moistened with

4515-624: Is believed to have been written in 1790, 1791 or 1799. In 1802, an account by Humphry Davy detailing Wedgwood's experiments was published in an early journal of the Royal Institution with the title An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver . Davy added that the method could be used for objects that are partly opaque and partly transparent to create accurate representations of, for instance, "the woody fibres of leaves and

4644-432: Is produced either directly by the flame, generally by using special mixes (typically propane or butane) of illuminating gas to increase brightness, or indirectly with other components such as the gas mantle or the limelight , with the gas primarily functioning to heat the mantle or the lime to incandescence . Before electricity became sufficiently widespread and economical to allow for general public use, gas lighting

4773-477: The choke damp and the other fire damp . In 1667, a paper detailing the effects of these gases was entitled, "A Description of a Well and Earth in Lancashire taking Fire, by a Candle approaching to it. Imparted by Thomas Shirley, Esq an eye-witness." British clergyman and scientist Stephen Hales experimented with the actual distillation of coal, thereby obtaining a flammable liquid. He reported his results in

4902-499: The Gas Light and Coke Company . A "thermolampe" using gas distilled from wood was patented in 1799, while German inventor Friedrich Winzer ( Frederick Albert Winsor ) was the first person to patent coal-gas lighting in 1804. In 1801, Phillipe Lebon of Paris had also used gas lights to illuminate his house and gardens, and was considering how to light all of Paris. In 1820, Paris adopted gas street lighting. In 1804, Dr Henry delivered

5031-464: The Technical Institute and Peter and Paul Fortress . It took many years of development and testing before gas lighting for the stage was commercially available. Gas technology was then installed in just about every major theatre in the world. But gas lighting was short-lived because the electric light bulb soon followed. In the 19th century, gas stage lighting went from a crude experiment to

5160-428: The calotype process, which, like Daguerre's process, used the principle of chemical development of a faint or invisible "latent" image to reduce the exposure time to a few minutes. Paper with a coating of silver iodide was exposed in the camera and developed into a translucent negative image. Unlike a daguerreotype, which could only be copied by photographing it with a camera, a calotype negative could be used to make

5289-485: The gas mantle was invented by the Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach . This eliminated the need for special illuminating gas (a synthetic mixture of hydrogen and hydrocarbon gases produced by destructive distillation of bituminous coal or peat ) to get bright shining flames. Acetylene was also used from about 1898 for gas lighting on a smaller scale. Illuminating gas was used for gas lighting, as it produces

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5418-408: The photographic process came about from a series of refinements and improvements in the first 20 years. In 1884 George Eastman , of Rochester, New York , developed dry gel on paper, or film , to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan "You press

5547-479: The "solar lamp". At the time, whale-oil was used in lamps but had become very expensive. Cornelius revised a British lamp design which forced additional air into the burner and allowed for the burning of lard rather than whale oil. He applied for and received a U.S. patent for the "solar lamp" in 1843. The lamp proved extremely popular and was sold in the U.S. and Europe. Two large factories in Philadelphia manufactured

5676-597: The "spirit" of coal. He discovered its flammability by an accident. The "spirit" he isolated from coal caught fire by coming in contact with a candle as it escaped from a fracture in one of his distillation vessels. He stored the coal gas in bladders, and at times he entertained his friends by demonstrating the flammability of the gas. Clayton published his findings in Philosophical Transactions . It took nearly 200 years for gas to become accessible for commercial use. A Flemish alchemist, Jan Baptista van Helmont ,

5805-487: The 1850s, the collodion process with its glass-based photographic plates combined the high quality known from the Daguerreotype with the multiple print options known from the calotype and was commonly used for decades. Roll films popularized casual use by amateurs. In the mid-20th century, developments made it possible for amateurs to take pictures in natural color as well as in black-and-white . The commercial introduction of computer-based electronic digital cameras in

5934-536: The 18th century. Around 1717, Johann Heinrich Schulze used a light-sensitive slurry to capture images of cut-out letters on a bottle. However, he did not pursue making these results permanent. Around 1800, Thomas Wedgwood made the first reliably documented, although unsuccessful attempt at capturing camera images in permanent form. His experiments did produce detailed photograms , but Wedgwood and his associate Humphry Davy found no way to fix these images. In 1826, Nicéphore Niépce first managed to fix an image that

6063-496: The 1930s none was "fast" enough for hand-held snapshot-taking, so they mostly served a niche market of affluent advanced amateurs. A new era in color photography began with the introduction of Kodachrome film, available for 16 mm home movies in 1935 and 35 mm slides in 1936. It captured the red, green, and blue color components in three layers of emulsion. A complex processing operation produced complementary cyan, magenta, and yellow dye images in those layers, resulting in

6192-457: The 1990s soon revolutionized photography. During the first decade of the 21st century, traditional film-based photochemical methods were increasingly marginalized as the practical advantages of the new technology became widely appreciated and the image quality of moderately priced digital cameras was continually improved. Especially since cameras became a standard feature on smartphones, taking pictures (and instantly publishing them online) has become

6321-483: The 19th century fell; these included footlights, border lights, groundrows, lengths, bunch lights, conical reflector floods, and limelight spots. These mechanisms sat directly on the stage, blinding the eyes of the audience. Gas lighting did have some disadvantages. "Several hundred theatres are said to have burned down in America and Europe between 1800 and the introduction of electricity in the late 1800s. The increased heat

6450-673: The American Philosophical Society in order to record the history of photography in the United States. Cornelius told Sachse that he began taking photographs in October 1839 but no evidence was found of his claim until 1975 when a librarian at the American Philosophical Society discovered photographs taken by Cornelius dated 1839. Working alongside chemist Paul Beck Goddard , Cornelius made significant advancements in reducing exposure times for daguerreotypes. Through

6579-505: The Boulevard du Temple , taken one or two years earlier, incidentally included two people on the sidewalk, Cornelius' self-portrait is generally accepted as the oldest known intentional photographic portrait of a person made in the United States. However, there are a number of earlier claims for photographic portraits, both from Europe and the United States, dating as far back as 1837. At the time, Cornelius did not make much of his achievement of

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6708-479: The Frenchman Tiphaigne de la Roche described something quite similar to (color) photography, a process that fixes fleeting images formed by rays of light: "They coat a piece of canvas with this material, and place it in front of the object to capture. The first effect of this cloth is similar to that of a mirror, but by means of its viscous nature the prepared canvas, as is not the case with the mirror, retains

6837-455: The London and Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company was established. Less than two years later, on 31 December 1813, Westminster Bridge was lit by gas. By 1816, Samuel Clegg obtained the patent for his horizontal rotative retort , his apparatus for purifying coal gas with cream of lime , and for his rotative gas meter and self-acting governor . Among the economic impacts of gas lighting

6966-524: The US illuminated by gas has been variously identified as that of David Melville (c. 1806), as described above, or of William Henry, a coppersmith , at 200 Lombard Street, Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, in 1816. In 1817, at the three stations of the Chartered Gas Company in London, 25 chaldrons (24 m ) of coal were carbonized daily, producing 300,000 cubic feet (8,500 m ) of gas. This supplied gas lamps equal to 75,000 Argand lamps each yielding

7095-665: The United Kingdom, coal gas was used until the early 1970s. The history of the Russian gas industry began with retired Lieutenant Pyotr Sobolevsky (1782–1841), who improved Philippe le Bon 's design for a "thermolamp" and presented it to Emperor Alexander I in 1811; in January 1812, Sobolevsky was instructed to draw up a plan for gas street-lighting for St. Petersburg. The French invasion of Russia delayed implementation, but St. Petersburg's Governor General Mikhail Miloradovich , who had seen

7224-598: The United States between 1840 and 1842 and implemented innovative techniques to significantly reduce the exposure time required for portraits. Cornelius was an inventor, businessman and lamp manufacturer. He created and patented the "solar lamp" in 1843 which burned brighter and allowed for the use of cheaper lard as a fuel source rather than more expensive whale oil . Cornelius was born in Philadelphia to Sarah Cornelius ( née  Soder ) and Christian Cornelius. His father immigrated from Amsterdam in 1783 and worked as

7353-480: The United States, in either 1805 or 1806 in Newport, Rhode Island . In 1809, accordingly, the first application was made to Parliament to incorporate a company in order to accelerate the process, but the bill failed to pass. In 1810, however, the application was renewed by the same parties, and though some opposition was encountered and considerable expense incurred, the bill passed, but not without great alterations; and

7482-453: The Winter evening betwixt Hallowtide and Candlemassee ." Paris was first illuminated by an order issued in 1524, and, in the beginning of the 16th century, the inhabitants were ordered to keep lights burning in the windows of all houses that faced streets. In 1668, when some regulations were made for improving the streets of London, the residents were reminded to hang out their lanterns at

7611-450: The bitumen process, substituting a more sensitive resin and a very different post-exposure treatment that yielded higher-quality and more easily viewed images. Exposure times in the camera, although substantially reduced, were still measured in hours. Niépce died suddenly in 1833, leaving his notes to Daguerre. More interested in silver-based processes than Niépce had been, Daguerre experimented with photographing camera images directly onto

7740-584: The bitumen was sufficiently hardened in proportion to its exposure to light that the unhardened part could be removed with a solvent, leaving a positive image with the light areas represented by hardened bitumen and the dark areas by bare pewter. To see the image plainly, the plate had to be lit and viewed in such a way that the bare metal appeared dark and the bitumen relatively light. In partnership, Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône and Louis Daguerre in Paris refined

7869-595: The button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others, and photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie . Charles Wheatstone developed his mirror stereoscope around 1832, but did not really publicize his invention until June 1838. He recognized the possibility of a combination with photography soon after Daguerre and Talbot announced their inventions and got Henry Fox Talbot to produce some calotype pairs for

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7998-436: The camera obscura was mainly used to study optics and astronomy, especially to safely watch solar eclipses without damaging the eyes. In the later half of the 16th century some technical improvements were developed: a biconvex lens in the opening (first described by Gerolamo Cardano in 1550) and a diaphragm restricting the aperture ( Daniel Barbaro in 1568) gave a brighter and sharper image. In 1558 Giambattista della Porta

8127-437: The camera obscura. In 1614 Angelo Sala noted that sunlight will turn powdered silver nitrate black, and that paper wrapped around silver nitrate for a year will turn black. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals in 1694. Around 1717, German polymath Johann Heinrich Schulze accidentally discovered that a slurry of chalk and nitric acid into which some silver particles had been dissolved

8256-567: The collection of IMS. Henry Fox Talbot had already succeeded in creating stabilized photographic negatives on paper in 1835, but worked on perfecting his own process after reading early reports of Daguerre's invention. In early 1839, he acquired a key improvement, an effective fixer, from his friend John Herschel , a polymath scientist who had previously shown that hyposulfite of soda (commonly called "hypo" and now known formally as sodium thiosulfate ) would dissolve silver salts. News of this solvent also benefited Daguerre, who soon adopted it as

8385-635: The demand for portraiture that emerged from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution . This demand, which could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, added to the push for the development of photography. Roger Fenton and Philip Henry Delamotte helped popularize the new way of recording events, the first by his Crimean War pictures, the second by his record of the disassembly and reconstruction of The Crystal Palace in London . Other mid-nineteenth-century photographers established

8514-602: The details of the process to the Chamber of Peers in Paris. On August 19 the technical details were made public in a meeting of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Fine Arts in the Palace of Institute. (For granting the rights of the inventions to the public, Daguerre and Niépce were awarded generous annuities for life.) When the metal based daguerreotype process was demonstrated formally to

8643-515: The early spring of 1840. Cornelius's studio gained popularity among wealthy patrons, and many of his portraits of famous individuals still exist today. Cornelius operated a second studio from 1841 to 1842. As the popularity of photography grew and more photographers opened studios, Cornelius either lost interest or realized that he could make more money at the family gas and lighting company. He managed Cornelius & Co. (later known as Cornelius & Baker) and had great success with his invention of

8772-597: The experiments. Although the journal of the nascent Royal Institution probably reached its very small group of members, the article must have been read eventually by many more people. It was reviewed by David Brewster in the Edinburgh Magazine in December 1802, appeared in chemistry textbooks as early as 1803, was translated into French and was published in German in 1811. Readers of the article may have been discouraged to find

8901-409: The extensive establishment of Messrs. Phillips and Lea. For this paper he was awarded Count Rumford 's gold medal. Murdoch's statements threw great light on the comparative advantage of gas and candles, and contained much useful information on the expenses of production and management. Although the history is uncertain, David Melville has been credited with the first house and street lighting in

9030-587: The first human photograph in the United States. It survived due to the efforts of Marcus Aurelius Root , a pupil at Cornelius' studio. Root published The Camera and The Pencil which provided background on the roots of photography in the United States. The book was highlighted at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 and caught the attention of Julius Sachse, a noted Philadelphia photographer and future editor of American Journal of Photography . Sachse began interviewing Cornelius and other members of

9159-452: The first photo taken in Egypt; that of Ras El Tin Palace . In America, by 1851 a broadsheet by daguerreotypist Augustus Washington was advertising prices ranging from 50 cents to $ 10. However, daguerreotypes were fragile and difficult to copy. Photographers encouraged chemists to refine the process of making many copies cheaply, which eventually led them back to Talbot's process. Ultimately,

9288-466: The first practical use of natural gas for lighting purposes around 500 B.C. in which they used bamboo pipelines to transport both brine and natural gas for many miles, such as the ones in Zigong salt mines. Public illumination preceded by centuries the development and widespread adoption of gas lighting. In 1417, Sir Henry Barton , Lord Mayor of London , ordained "Lanthornes with lights to bee hanged out on

9417-578: The first stage 'switchboard'. By the 1850s, gas lighting in theatres had spread practically all over the United States and Europe. Some of the largest installations of gas lighting were in large auditoriums, like the Théâtre du Chatelet , built in 1862. In 1875, the new Paris Opera was constructed. "Its lighting system contained more than twenty-eight miles [45 km] of gas piping, and its gas table had no fewer than eighty-eight stopcocks, which controlled nine hundred and sixty gas jets." The theatre that used

9546-412: The first volume of his Vegetable Statics , published in 1726. From the distillation of "one hundred and fifty-eight grains [10.2 g] of Newcastle coal, he stated that he obtained 180 cubic inches [2.9 L] of gas, which weighed 51 grains [3.3 g], being nearly one third of the whole." Hales's results garnered attention decades later as the unique chemical properties of various gases became understood through

9675-582: The formula alkaline . The new formula was sold by the Platinotype Company in London as Sulphur-Pyrogallol Developer. Nineteenth-century experimentation with photographic processes frequently became proprietary. The German-born, New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal successfully sought legal redress in an 1881 infringement case involving his "Lambert Process" in the Eastern District of Louisiana. The daguerreotype proved popular in response to

9804-449: The gas lighting of Vienna, Paris and other European cities, initiated experimental work on gas lighting for the capital, using British apparatus for obtaining gas from pit coal, and by the autumn of 1819, Russia's first gas street light was lit on one of the streets on Aptekarsky Island . In February 1835, the Company for Gas Lighting St. Petersburg was founded; towards the end of that year,

9933-569: The high energy density of the hydrocarbon fuel , and the modular canisters on which camping lights are built, brings bright and long lasting light without complex equipment. In addition, some urban historical districts retain gas street lighting , and gas lighting is used indoors or outdoors to create or preserve a nostalgic effect . Prior to use of gaseous fuels for lighting, the early lighting fuels consisted of olive oil , beeswax , fish oil , whale oil , sesame oil , nut oil, or other similar substances, which were all liquid fuels. These were

10062-556: The image being further affected by the light. The notion that light can affect various substances—for instance, the sun tanning of skin or fading of textile—must have been around since very early times. Ideas of fixing the images seen in mirrors or other ways of creating images automatically may also have been in people's minds long before anything like photography was developed. However, there seem to be no historical records of any ideas even remotely resembling photography before 1700, despite early knowledge of light-sensitive materials and

10191-445: The image formed in a camera was created by Niépce in 1826 or 1827. It was made on a polished sheet of pewter and the light-sensitive substance was a thin coating of bitumen , a naturally occurring petroleum tar, which was dissolved in lavender oil , applied to the surface of the pewter and allowed to dry before use. After a very long exposure in the camera (traditionally said to be eight hours, but now believed to be several days),

10320-485: The images formed in a small camera, but the photographs were negatives , darkest where the camera image was lightest and vice versa, and they were not permanent in the sense of being reasonably light-fast; like earlier experimenters, Niépce could find no way to prevent the coating from darkening all over when it was exposed to light for viewing. Disenchanted with silver salts , he turned his attention to light-sensitive organic substances. The oldest surviving photograph of

10449-489: The intensity of the light from each source. In 1806 The Philips and Lee factory and a portion of Chapel Street in Salford, Lancashire were lit by gas, thought to be the first use of gas street lighting in the world. Josiah Pemberton , an inventor, had for some time been experimenting on the nature of gas. A resident of Birmingham, his attention may have been roused by the exhibition at Soho. About 1806, he exhibited gas lights in

10578-652: The lamp. Cornelius also received patents for lighting gaslights with electric sparks. The Cornelius lamp company also created the first kerosene lamp , however cheaper and more efficient versions dominated the market. While Cornelius was still a wealthy man, his once dominant lamp company was overtaken by other companies. Cornelius married Harriet Comly (sometimes spelled "Comely") in 1832. They had eight children: three sons and five daughters. Cornelius retired from his family's business in 1877. In his later years, he lived at his country home in Frankford, Philadelphia . Cornelius

10707-513: The light of six candles. At the City Gas Works, in Dorset Street, Blackfriars , three chaldrons of coal were carbonized each day, providing the gas equivalent of 9,000 Argand lamps. So 28 chaldrons of coal were carbonized daily, and 84,000 lights supplied by those two companies only. At this period the principal difficulty in gas manufacture was purification. Mr. D. Wilson, of Dublin, patented

10836-465: The medium as a more precise means than engraving or lithography of making a record of landscapes and architecture: for example, Robert Macpherson 's broad range of photographs of Rome, the interior of the Vatican, and the surrounding countryside became a sophisticated tourist's visual record of his own travels. In 1839, François Arago reported the invention of photography to stunned listeners by displaying

10965-512: The most commonly used fuels until the late 18th century. Whale oil was especially widely used for lighting in European cities such as London through the early 19th century. Chinese records dating back 1,700 years indicate the use of natural gas in homes for lighting and heating. The natural gas was transported by means of bamboo pipes to homes. The ancient Chinese of the Spring and Autumn period made

11094-527: The most effective. He first lit his own house in Redruth , Cornwall in 1792. In 1798, he used gas to light the main building of the Soho Foundry and in 1802 lit the outside in a public display of gas lighting, the lights astonishing the local population. One of the employees at the Soho Foundry, Samuel Clegg , saw the potential of this new form of lighting. Clegg left his job to set up his own gas lighting business,

11223-602: The most gas lighting was Astley's Equestrian Amphitheatre in London. According to the Illustrated London News , "Everywhere white and gold meets the eye, and about 200,000 gas jets add to the glittering effect of the auditorium … such a blaze of light and splendour has scarcely ever been witnessed, even in dreams." Theatres switched to gas lighting because it was more economical than using candles and also required less labour to operate. With gas lighting, theatres would no longer need to have people tending to candles during

11352-614: The most popular way of lighting theatrical stages. In 1804, Frederick Albert Winsor first demonstrated the way to use gas to light the stage in London at the Lyceum Theatre . Although the demonstration and all the lead research were being done in London, "in 1816 at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia was the earliest gas lit theatre in world". In 1817 the Lyceum, Drury Lane , and Covent Garden theatres were all lit by gas. Gas

11481-400: The new technology that one said, "This light is perfect for the stage. One can obtain gradation of brightness that is really magical." The best result was the improved respect from the audience. There was no more shouting or riots. The light pushed the actors more up stage behind the proscenium, helping the audience concentrate more on the action that was taking place on stage rather than what

11610-538: The new technology. Murdoch was the first to exploit the flammability of gas for the practical application of lighting. He worked for Matthew Boulton and James Watt at their Soho Foundry steam engine works in Birmingham , England. In the early 1790s, while overseeing the use of his company's steam engines in tin mining in Cornwall, Murdoch began experimenting with various types of gas, finally settling on coal gas as

11739-506: The news quickly spread. At first, all details of the process were withheld and specimens were shown only at Daguerre's studio, under his close supervision, to Academy members and other distinguished guests. Arrangements were made for the French government to buy the rights in exchange for pensions for Niépce's son and Daguerre and to present the invention to the world (with the exception of Great Britain, where an agent for Daguerre patented it) as

11868-542: The oldest photographs taken in the United States. Soon after, Saxton approached Cornelius in order to receive better daguerreotype plates. It was this meeting that sparked Cornelius's interest in photography. Around October 1839, Cornelius improvised a camera obscura and made his first daguerreotype, a self-portrait outside of his family store. The image required him to pose still for 10 to 15 minutes and has survived. Other early images of his family made by Cornelius have not been preserved. While Louis Daguerre 's photograph of

11997-480: The photogram and shadow images he managed to capture around 1800 (see below). Elizabeth Fulhame 's book An essay on combustion described her experiments of the effects of light on silver salts. She is better known for her discovery of what is now called catalysis , but Larry J. Schaaf in his history of photography considered her work on silver chemistry to represent a major step in the development of photography. English photographer and inventor Thomas Wedgwood

12126-662: The principal streets in the centre of the city, as well as nearby houses, had switched to gas lighting by the end of 1817. In America, Seth Bemis lit his factory with gas illumination from 1812 to 1813. The use of gas lights in Rembrandt Peale 's Museum in Baltimore in 1816 was a great success. Baltimore was the first American city with gas street lights; Peale's Gas Light Company of Baltimore on 7 February 1817 lit its first street lamp at Market and Lemon Streets (currently Baltimore and Holliday Streets). The first private residence in

12255-411: The principle behind gas lighting. Later in the 18th century William Murdoch (sometimes spelled "Murdock") stated: "the gas obtained by distillation from coal, peat, wood and other inflammable substances burnt with great brilliancy upon being set fire to … by conducting it through tubes, it might be employed as an economical substitute for lamps and candles." Murdoch's first invention was a lantern with

12384-486: The process, but purportedly demonstrated it in his lectures at the Louvre. It was not publicized until François Arago mentioned it at his introduction of the details of the daguerreotype to the world in 1839. He later wrote that the first idea of fixing the images of the camera obscura or the solar microscope with chemical substances belonged to Charles. Later historians probably only built on Arago's information, and, much later,

12513-473: The public, the competitor approach of paper-based calotype negative and salt print processes invented by William Henry Fox Talbot was already demonstrated in London (but with less publicity). Subsequent innovations made photography easier and more versatile. New materials reduced the required camera exposure time from minutes to seconds, and eventually to a small fraction of a second; new photographic media were more economical, sensitive or convenient. Since

12642-493: The rapid adoption of electric lighting. By 1881, the Savoy Theatre in London was using incandescent lighting. While electric lighting was introduced to theatre stages, the gas mantle was developed in 1885 for gas-lit theatres. "This was a beehive-shaped mesh of knitted thread impregnated with lime that, in miniature, converted the naked gas flame into in effect, a lime-light ." Electric lighting slowly took over in theatres. In

12771-436: The scene on the drawing surface, thus aiding in the accurate rendering of perspective. Note: In the process discussed here, the "Fixing" step is mentioned. This is a step in the negative development process as well as in the chemical printing process. (Of course not required in digital printing). At this stage, all remaining light-sensitive materials are removed so that the product (film or print) can be exposed to light without

12900-602: The silver chloride, but not the dark particles. This discovery could have been used to stabilize or "fix" a camera image captured with silver chloride, but was not picked up by the earliest photography experimenters. Scheele also noted that red light did not have much effect on silver chloride, a phenomenon that would later be applied in photographic darkrooms as a method of seeing black-and-white prints without harming their development. Although Thomas Wedgwood felt inspired by Scheele's writings in general, he must have missed or forgotten these experiments; he found no method to fix

13029-537: The stereoscope. He received the first results in October 1840, but was not fully satisfied as the angle between the shots was very big. Between 1841 and 1842 Henry Collen made calotypes of statues, buildings and portraits, including a portrait of Charles Babbage shot in August 1841. Wheatstone also obtained daguerreotype stereograms from Mr. Beard in 1841 and from Hippolyte Fizeau and Antoine Claudet in 1842. None of these have yet been located. David Brewster developed

13158-407: The story "A Photographer's Day Out". Herbert Bowyer Berkeley discovered that with his own addition of sulfite , to absorb the sulfur dioxide given off by the chemical dithionite in the developer , dithionite was not required in the developing process. In 1881, he published his discovery. Berkeley's formula contained pyrogallol, sulfite, and citric acid. Ammonia was added just before use to make

13287-440: The substance "Scotophors" when he published his findings in 1719. He thought the discovery could be applied to detect whether metals or minerals contained any silver and hoped that further experimentation by others would lead to some other useful results. Schulze's process resembled later photogram techniques and is sometimes regarded as the very first form of photography. The early science fiction novel Giphantie (1760) by

13416-425: The surface. Then through the use of a rolling press, five tons of pressure were used to flatten the grains, enabling every one of them to capture and absorb color and their microscopic size allowing the illusion that the colors are merged. The final step was adding a coat of the light-capturing substance silver bromide , after which a color image could be imprinted and developed. In order to see it, reversal processing

13545-531: The unsupported year 1780 was attached to it. As Arago indicated the first years of the 19th century and a date prior to the 1802 publication of Wedgwood's process, this would mean that Charles' demonstrations took place in 1800 or 1801, assuming that Arago was this accurate almost 40 years later. Nicéphore Niépce was a French aristocrat, scientist, and chemist. His family fortune allowed him to engage in inventions and scientific research. In 1816, using paper coated with silver chloride , he succeeded in photographing

13674-492: The use of bromine, better plates and the implementation of reflectors and blue glass filters to enhance lighting conditions, they managed to decrease the exposure time for daguerreotype portraits to less than a minute. In May 1840, Cornelius opened a photographic studio, the first in Philadelphia and second in the world. It was preceded by the studio of Alexander Wolcott and John Johnson in New York , which Cornelius visited in

13803-668: The usual time, and, in 1690, an order was issued to hang out a light, or lamp, every night at nightfall, from Michaelmas to Christmas. By an Act of the Common Council in 1716, all housekeepers, whose houses faced any street, lane, or passage, were required to hang out, every dark night, one or more lights, to burn from six to eleven o'clock, under the penalty of one shilling as a fine for failing to do so. Accumulating and escaping gases were known originally among coal miners for their adverse effects rather than their useful characteristics. Coal miners described two types of gases, one called

13932-528: The wings of insects". He also found that solar microscope images of small objects were easily captured on prepared paper. Davy, apparently unaware or forgetful of Scheele's discovery, concluded that substances should be found to eliminate (or deactivate) the unexposed particles in silver nitrate or silver chloride "to render the process as useful as it is elegant". Wedgwood may have prematurely abandoned his experiments because of his frail and failing health. He died at age 34 in 1805. Davy seems not to have continued

14061-687: The work of Joseph Black , Henry Cavendish , Alessandro Volta , and others. A 1733 publication by Sir James Lowther in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society detailed some properties of coal gas, including its flammability. Lowther demonstrated the principal properties of coal gas to different members of the Royal Society . He showed that the gas retained its flammability after storage for some time. The demonstration did not result in identification of utility. Minister and experimentalist John Clayton referred to coal gas as

14190-517: Was 176x176 pixels with only one bit per pixel, i.e., stark black and white with no intermediate gray tones, but by combining multiple scans of the photograph done with different black-white threshold settings, grayscale information could also be acquired. Gaslight Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from combustion of a fuel gas such as methane , propane , butane , acetylene , ethylene , hydrogen , carbon monoxide , coal gas (town gas) or natural gas . The light

14319-628: Was also an elder at the Presbyterian Church, where he was a member for fifty years. He died at his Frankford home on August 10, 1893 and was interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery . History of photography The history of photography began with the discovery of two critical principles: The first is camera obscura image projection; the second is the discovery that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. There are no artifacts or descriptions that indicate any attempt to capture images with light sensitive materials prior to

14448-413: Was brought into the building by "miles of rubber tubing from outlets in the floor called 'water joints'" which "carried the gas to border-lights and wing lights". But before it was distributed, the gas came through a central distribution point called a "gas table", which varied the brightness by regulating the gas supply, and the gas table, which allowed control of separate parts of the stage. Thus it became

14577-466: Was captured with a camera, but at least eight hours or even several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude. Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced and commercially viable photographic process. The daguerreotype required only minutes of exposure in the camera, and produced clear, finely detailed results. On August 2, 1839 Daguerre demonstrated

14706-468: Was darkened by sunlight. After experiments with threads that had created lines on the bottled substance after he placed it in direct sunlight for a while, he applied stencils of words to the bottle. The stencils produced copies of the text in dark red, almost violet characters on the surface of the otherwise whitish contents. The impressions persisted until they were erased by shaking the bottle or until overall exposure to light obliterated them. Schulze named

14835-507: Was due to the Preston Gaslight Company run by revolutionary Joseph Dunn , who found the most improved way of brighter gas lighting. The parish church there was the first religious building to be lit by gas lighting. In Bristol , a Gas Light Company was founded on 15 December 1815. Under the supervision of the engineer, John Brelliat, extensive works were conducted in 1816-17 to build a gasholder, mains and street lights. Many of

14964-526: Was established, with Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet as general manager. The 1839 invention, the Bude-Light , provided a brighter and more economical lamp. Oil-gas appeared in the field as a rival of coal gas. In 1815, John Taylor patented an apparatus for the decomposition of "oil" and other animal substances. Public attention was attracted to "oil-gas" by the display of the patent apparatus at Apothecary's Hall , by Taylor & Martineau . In 1891

15093-426: Was going on in the house. Management had more authority on what went on during the show because they could see. Gaslight was the leading cause of behaviour change in theatres. They were no longer places for mingling and orange selling, but places of respected entertainment. There were six types of burners, but four burners were really experimented with: Several different instruments were used for stage lighting in

15222-421: Was made practical by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel 's 1873 discovery of a way to make emulsions sensitive to the rest of the spectrum, gradually introduced into commercial use beginning in the mid-1880s. Two French inventors, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros , working unknown to each other during the 1860s, famously unveiled their nearly identical ideas on the same day in 1869. Included were methods for viewing

15351-484: Was much longer work hours in factories. This was particularly important in Great Britain during the winter months when nights are significantly longer. Factories could even work continuously over 24 hours, resulting in increased production. Following successful commercialization, gas lighting spread to other countries. In England, the first place outside London to have gas lighting was Preston, Lancashire , in 1816; this

15480-496: Was not recognized as its inventor. In 1839, John Herschel made the first glass negative, but his process was difficult to reproduce. Slovene Janez Puhar invented a process for making photographs on glass in 1841; it was recognized on June 17, 1852, in Paris by the Académie National Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale. In 1847, Nicephore Niépce's cousin, the chemist Niépce St. Victor , published his invention of

15609-434: Was objectionable, and the border lights and wing lights had to be lighted by a long stick with a flaming wad of cotton at the end. For many years, an attendant or gas boy moved along the long row of jets, lighting them individually while gas was escaping from the whole row. Both actors and audiences complained of the escaping gas, and explosions sometimes resulted from its accumulation." These problems with gas lighting led to

15738-414: Was prevalent for outdoor and indoor use in cities and suburbs where the infrastructure for distribution of gas was practical. At that time, the most common fuels for gas lighting were wood gas , coal gas and, in limited cases, water gas . Early gas lights were ignited manually by lamplighters , although many later designs are self-igniting. Gas lighting now is frequently used for camping , for which

15867-479: Was sought from the very beginning. Results were demonstrated by Edmond Becquerel as early as the year of 1848, but exposures lasting for hours or days were required and the captured colors were so light-sensitive they would only bear very brief inspection in dim light. The first color photograph was a set of three black-and-white photographs taken through red, green, and blue color filters and shown superimposed by using three projectors with similar filters. It

15996-465: Was taken by Thomas Sutton in 1861 for use in a lecture by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell , who had proposed the method in 1855. The photographic emulsions then in use were insensitive to most of the spectrum , so the result was very imperfect and the demonstration was soon forgotten. Maxwell's method is now most widely known through the early 20th century work of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii . It

16125-425: Was the first person to formally recognize gas as a state of matter. He would go on to identify several types of gases, including carbon dioxide. Over one hundred years later in 1733, Sir James Lowther had some of his miners working on a water pit for his mine. While digging the pit they hit a pocket of gas. Lowther took a sample of the gas and took it home to do some experiments. He noted, "The said air being put into

16254-540: Was the first step in the path that Walter Benjamin described in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction . A physiognotrace is an instrument, designed to support semi-automated portrait. It was invented in the 18th century and was abandoned when light-sensitive materials were discovered. It was popular for several decades. The sitter sat in a wooden frame and turned to the side to pose. A pantograph connected to

16383-457: Was the first to write a description of using the camera obscura as a drawing aid in his popular and influential books. Della Porta's proposal was widely adopted by artists and since the 17th century portable versions of the camera obscura were commonly used—first as a tent, later as boxes. The box type camera obscura was the basis for photographic cameras, as used in the earliest attempts to capture natural images in light sensitive materials. This

16512-580: Was to be found all over Britain and about a thousand gas works had sprung up to meet the demand for the new fuel. The brighter lighting which gas provided allowed people to read more easily and for longer. This helped to stimulate literacy and learning, speeding up the second Industrial Revolution . In 1824 the English Association for Gas Lighting on the Continent , a sizeable business producing gas for several cities in mainland, Europe, including Berlin,

16641-422: Was used to develop each plate into a transparent positive that could be viewed directly or projected with an ordinary projector. One of the drawbacks of the technology was an exposure time of at least a second in bright daylight, with the time required quickly increasing in poor light. An indoor portrait required several minutes with the subject stationary. This was because the grains absorbed color fairly slowly, and

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