The Evolution of Photography: With a Chronological Record of Discoveries, Inventions, Etc., Contributions to Photographic Literature, and Personal Reminescences Extending over Forty YearsWerge, John, active 1854-1890
History
The Evolution of Photography: With a Chronological Record of Discoveries, Inventions, Etc., Contributions to Photographic Literature, and Personal Reminescences Extending over Forty Years
Werge, John, active 1854-1890
Photography -- History
In the Canadian City I did not find business very lively, so after
viewing the fine Cathedral of Notre Dame, the mountain, and other
places, I left Montreal and proceeded by rail to Boston. The difference
between the two cities was immense. Montreal was dull and sleepy, Boston
was all bustle and life, and the people were as unlike as the cities. On
my arrival in Boston, I put up at the Quincy Adams Hotel, and spent the
first few days in looking about the somewhat quaint and interesting old
city, hunting up Franklin Associations, and revolutionary landmarks,
Bunker Hill, and other places of interest. Having satisfied my appetite
for these things, I began to look about me with an eye to business, and
called upon the chief Daguerreans and photographers in Boston. Messrs.
Southworth and Hawes possessed the largest Daguerreotype establishment,
and did an excellent business. In their "Saloon" I saw the largest and
finest revolving stereoscope that was ever exhibited. The pictures were
all whole-plate Daguerreotypes, and set vertically on the perpendicular
drum on which they revolved. The drum was turned by a handle attached to
cog wheels, so that a person sitting before it could see the
stereoscopic pictures with the utmost ease. It was an expensive
instrument, but it was a splendid advertisement, for it drew crowds to
their saloon to see it and to sit, and their enterprise met with its
reward.
At Mr. Whipple's gallery, in Washington Street, a dual photography was
carried on, for he made both Daguerreotypes and what he called
"crystallotypes," which were simply plain silver prints obtained from
collodion negatives. Mr. Whipple was the first American photographer who
saw the great commercial advantages of the collodion process over the
Daguerreotype, and he grafted it on the elder branch of photography
almost as soon as it was introduced. Indeed, Mr. Whipple's establishment
may be considered the very cradle of American photography as far as
collodion negatives and silver prints are concerned, for he was the very
first to take hold of it with spirit, and as early as 1853 he was doing
a large business in photographs, and teaching the art to others.
Although I had taken collodion negatives in England with Mawson's
collodion in 1852, I paid Mr. Whipple fifty dollars to be shown how he
made his collodion, silver bath, developer, printing, &c., &c., for
which purpose he handed me over to his active and intelligent assistant
and newly-made partner, Mr. Black. This gave me the run of the
establishment, and I was somewhat surprised to find how vast and varied
were his mechanical appliances for reducing labour and expediting work.
The successful practice of the Daguerreotype art greatly depended on the
cleanness and highly polished surface of the silvered plates, and to
secure these necessary conditions, Mr. Whipple had, with characteristic
and Yankee-like ingenuity, obtained the assistance of a steam engine
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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