THE ROMANCE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Otago Witness, Issue 3885, 28 August 1928, Page 76

THE ROMANCE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

What, one wonders, would Louis Daguerre, father of daguerreotype, think of the modern amateur photographer who obtains his roll of films from an automatic machine at a shilling a time? Doubtless even this brilliant French pioneer could hardly foresee the ever-widening reach of his researches, for the gap between the laborious days of the wet plate and the modern efficiency of photographic films and dry plates is a wide one. England, France, Germany, and America share fairly evenly the parentage of the modern hand camera. England took the lead 130 years ago when Thomas Wedgwood first applied to photographic purposes the camera liicida. or sketching camera, recently invented by Dr W. H. Wollaston, and much used at that time by artists and architects for projecting an image on a screen to enable them to obtain true perspective in their sketches.

Dr Wollaston carried things a step farther when he found that a lens could be employed to sharpen the image. Meanwhile Daguerre had been busy with the study of light-sensitive surfaces, and his experiments greatly stimulated French research. About 1830 the Chevalier brothers manufactured in Paris the first photographic lenses. The mid-’thirties was. in fact, a period of intensive experiment with successive triumphs in various countries representing a state of international rivalry that has a modern equivalent in the present race for the perfection of television. In 1835 M . H. Fox Talbot constructed a simple box camera for taking vii-v.-s of his house, and claimed them as the first photographs of a building. Niepce entered the fray with the invention of a camera with a “bellows” body, first used in France in 1839 for daguerrotype, and about the same date saw J. Atkinson place England on terms with the first portable camera of the “bellows ” pattern. The possibilities of the portable camera were seen for the first time, and with them came the knowledge of the vast potential public awaiting a conveniently compact model. Between 1850 and 1860 small portable cameras on modern lines were made by B. G. Edwards, T. Scaife, A. Bertsch, ami T. Ottewill, but it was not until 1881, when rapid gelatine dry plates were achieved, that amateur photography drew within reach of Mr and Mrs Evervman.

Cameras in sundry styles and many disguises followed in swift succession. Then, in 1888, R. Krugener produced a camera disguised as a book, and for a time it was the fashion to own a camera with the outward dress of anything from a watch or handbag to an umbrella handle or—in one case—a straw hat!

At this stage, with cameras becoming rapidly cheaper and likely to attract popular taste, America entered the field with a competitor who must be counted the real sponsor of modern “ snapshotting.” That man was, and is, George Eastman, the head of the gigantic Kodak corporation, who remains a big figure despite America’s attempts to make him one. He is 73, has a fortune of approximately . 150,000,000d01, is a great philanthropist, and no talker. Americans call him “ Eastman the Silent.”

The personal story of George Eastman is one of the most remarkable of all the Success Sagas of America’s business men. At 14 Eastman left his school in Rochester, U.S.A., and became an insurance clerk, contriving to save on a wage of 3dol a week. He next obtained a post as a bank clerk, and from a wage of £3 a week saved £6OO in seven years I The merest chance turned him to photography. His holiday was due and he bought a camera, of which he knew nothing, to take with him. He began at a time when the amateur photographer proclaimed himself with unwieldy tripods, a dark tent for outdoor developing, ahefr sundry' bottles of chemicals. Eastman did not go away, but instead remained to master his new hobby, and when he returned to his. desk at the bank he devoted his evenings to its pursuit in his home-made laboratory with his home-made lamp. ' The arrival of dry plates only intensified his belief in’ the future of his hobby, but he still felt that there were too many etceteras in the taking of pictures, which would have to be simplified before the public would accept photography as-a pastime. And, slowly, out of these d’ssatisfactions emerged the idea of the roll film, an object that he achieved after nine 'years of experiment. He suffered two business failures in attempting to market his invention. The third brought success, as well it might, for not only did the roll film revolutionise amateur photography, but it also gave birth to the film industry and extended commercial photography in a hundred wavs.

The "omparatively small town of Rochester has excellent reason to be thankful for the bank clerk’s invention and the beneficence of the inventor, which shows itself in the Eastman Theatre that seats 3400 people and combines a kinema with a superlative orchestra that plays only the world’s masterpieces; the Eastman School of Music; the Rochester University, which is being enlarged through his generosity; Kodak Park with its 16,000 workers’ homes; and several hospitals and clinics for whose erection and partmaintenance Eastman is again respon-

sible. Neither is his philanthropy confined to local needs, as London has good i eason t< know. It was only recently flint he gave the enormous sum of ’200,000 to the Royal Free Hospital tor the founding of a magnificent dental ■linic.——.John o’ London’s Weekly.