DEATH OF PROLIFIC INVENTOR.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14342, 11 July 1914, Page 5

DEATH OF PROLIFIC INVENTOR.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND ELECTRIC ‘ LIGHTING. Sir Josepn Wilson Swan, a man of varied scientific attainments and achievements, but chiefly known for his practical inventions and discoveries in photography and electric lighting, who died last month in England in his 86th year, came of a family several members of which had been distinguished as designers improvers of nautical apparatus and machinery. In his school days Swan became attracted by the study of chemistry, and on leaving school he was apprenticed to a firm of chemists in Sunderland. When still young in years he joined his future brother-in-law and parter, Mr John Mawson, in his business of a chemist, at Newcastle. Already Swan had by reading and experiment added greatly to his’ knowledge of chemistry. In this study he was greatly assisted by the library and lectures of the Sunder- | bind Athenaeum. Mr Mawson proved I a congenial associate, and the young I man’s practical knowledge greatly en- j larged the chemist’s business, in which became added the manufacture of chemicals and scientific apparatus. “CARBON PROCESS,”

Photography was at this time a new art (writes the London Daily Telegraph), and Swan was deeply interested in the discoveries made by Daguerre and Fox-Talbot. He followed up Scott Archer’s discovery of the collodion process, and to this day the manufacture of Mawson’s collodium is continued on the basis laid by Swan. In 1860 the latter was taken into partnership. and the firm of Mawson and Swan was established. During the next decade Swan was responsible for many developments in the science of photography. He worked out the “carbon process,” commonly known as “autotype,” which was the first practical method of producing permanent photographs. From this invention have been derived many of the most serviceable applications of photography, and in particular that form of photo-mechanical reproduction known as photogravure. Generally it maybe said that to Sir Joseph Swan are owing many cf the most important steps in the advance of photographic printing.

When in 1867 Mr Mawson perished in the nitre-glycerine disaster on Newcastle Town Moor, where, as Sheriff of Newcastle, he was superintending the removal of this dangerous explosive, Joseph Swan became head of an active and prosperous business. Still pursuing his scientific investigations, he enlarged in many directions the operations of his firm. His experiments in the making of typographic half-tone blocks from a photographic basis laid the foundation for a process of reproduction which has revolutionised the art of book illustration. An important side issue to Mr Swan’s researches was an application of the chemical principles involved in the “carbon process’’ to leather-making and the establishment of the industry pf chrome tanning. THE RAPID PLATE.

Perhaps the most famous and farreaching of Sir Joseph Swan’s inventions in photography was his perfecting of the rapid photographic plate. Dr Maddox was responsible for (he highly important evolution of the "dry plate,” but in the matter of the required exposure to light Dr Maddox’s “dry plate” was no improvement on the collodion surface, and it had also the disadvantages of being difficult to produce and uncertain in action. These disadvantages were removed by Mr Swan, who in 1877 found the means—by greatly increasing the temperature of the emulsionof accelerating the speed of dry plates fifty-fold. Unfortunately he did not patent his process, but merely applied it to hia own manufactures. lie received credit, however, for his discovery in 1002, when the president of the Royal Photographic Society, in presenting him with the Progress medal for his carbon process, recorded that his firm was the first to place a rapid dry plate upon the market. Without this discovery photography, not merely in many commercial directions, but as a hobby of enormous popularity, would have been impossible.

INVENTOR OP CARBON FILAMENT Side by side with his photographic studies Joseph Swan had conducted a great many experiments in the construction of electrical apparatus. It was he who put the crowning touch upon an idea at which many clover brains had worked, and who devised the form of incandescent electrical highly-exhausted glass bulb with two hermetically sealed-iu wires entering the bulb, and supporting between their inward ends a thin carbon conductor. A lamp of this type was exhibited by Mr Swan at his lecture in Newcastle in February, 1879, when Sir William Armstrong was in the chair. The first lighting of a public building by the new lamp took place nt the Literary and Philosophical Society’s room at Newcastle on October 20, 1880. Many other names would have to be mentioned in any history of the development of electric lighting, hut it may be said that to Sir Joseph Swan’s production of the carbon filament and his overcoming of many of the difficulties in the manipulation of (lie electric current was due the coming of the incandescent electric lamp into general use. Another important, invention made by Sir Joseph Swan in relation to electric lighting and the problem of (fie electrical storage, of energy was Ine cellular-plate. This device in many varieties has been a most valuable contribution to (he means of maintaining a constant potential at the place ot electric supply under conditions of variableness in generation ot electricity or demand for current. The late Sir Joseph Swan was a brother ot the late Mr G. 11. Swan, ot Wanganui, and was the uncle of Mr J. G. (’'George'') Swan, who is now on a trip to England and the Continent.