The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics — John Shaqi
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Let us now proceed to take one of these pictures. In a small room, lighted
by a few rays which filter through a yellow curtain, a youth has been
employed all the morning in developing the sensitive conscience of certain
sheets of paper, which came to him from the manufacturer already glazed by
having been floated upon the white of eggs and carefully dried, as
previously described. This "albumenized" paper the youth lays gently and
skilfully upon the surface of a solution of nitrate of silver. When it has
floated there a few minutes, he lifts it, lets it drain, and hangs it by
one corner to dry. This "sensitized" paper is served fresh every morning,
as it loses its delicacy by keeping.
We take a piece of this paper of the proper size, and lay it on the
varnished or pictured side of the negative, which is itself laid in a
wooden frame, like a picture-frame. Then we place a thick piece of cloth
on the paper. Then we lay a hinged wooden back on the cloth, and by means
of two brass springs press all close together,--the wooden back against
the cloth, the cloth against the paper, the paper against the negative. We
turn the frame over and see that the plain side of the glass negative is
clean. And now we step out upon the roof of the house into the bright
sunshine, and lay the frame, with the glass uppermost, in the full blaze
of light. For a very little while we can see the paper darkening through
the negative, but presently it clouds so much that its further changes
cannot be recognized. When we think it has darkened nearly enough, we turn
it over, open a part of the hinged back, turn down first a portion of the
thick cloth, and then enough of the paper to see something of the forming
picture. If not printed dark enough as yet, we turn back to their places
successively the picture, the cloth, the opened part of the frame, and lay
it again in the sun. It is just like cooking: the sun is the fire, and the
picture is the cake; when it is browned exactly to the right point, we
take it off the fire. A photograph-printer will have fifty or more
pictures printing at once, and he keeps going up and down the line,
opening the frames to look and see how they are getting on. As fast as
they are done, he turns them over, back to the sun, and the cooking
process stops at once.
The pictures which have just been printed in the sunshine are of a
peculiar purple tint, and still sensitive to the light, which will first
"flatten them out," and finally darken the whole paper, if they are
exposed to it before the series of processes which "fixes" and "tones"
them. They are kept shady, therefore, until a batch is ready to go down to
the toning room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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