BECEEATIYE SCIENCE. 



18t 



THE ANECDOTE HISTOEY OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 



COLLECTION I. 



It would be superfluous to enter into any- 

 lengthened or learned dissertation on tlie 

 origin of the term Photography, suffice it to 

 say that it is derived from the Greek words 

 phos (photos) and ffrapho, which in English 

 signify to draw or paint hy the agency 

 of light. The art has also been called 

 Heliography, a term compounded of two 

 Greek words, meaning to paint or draw by 

 the agency of sunlight ; and indeed this lat- 

 ter appellation better illustrates our topic 

 when we speak of the science of the sun- 

 beam — the sunbeam or pencil of light that 

 portrays, on any properly prepared surface, 

 and through the medium of the delineat- 

 ing lens, either portraits, pictures, or land- 

 scapes. 



Photography, or the science of the sun- 

 beam, has thus become essentially one of the 

 most beautiful and graphic arts of the day, 

 and has proved itself an invaluable auxiliary to 

 the progress and promotion of almost every 

 art and science, while its general difiusion 

 throughout England, the Continent, and the 

 world, is no small proof of its universality 

 and value. We have now a central society 

 in London — the Photographic Society and 

 Exhibition — numbering between 400 and 

 500 of the most eminent practical photogra- 

 phers ; another in France, and others in the 

 principal continental cities. There are nu- 

 merous artists of emiaence in London who 

 practice photography as a profession, while 

 the total number of those who devote them- 

 selves to it in the metropolis and provinces 

 may be estimated by hundreds. Then there 

 are amateurs without number, a multitude of 

 professed photographic material dealers and 

 practical apparatus makers, while the money 

 expended in the art amounts to many thou- 

 sands a year. Most of our large English 



cities have their photographic societies and 

 exhibitions, and one has been recently estab- 

 lished in India. In addition to this, it has 

 given great impetus in a new direction to the 

 glass and chemical trades, to the frame manu 

 facturer, to the miniature painter, the opti- 

 cian, the paper-maker, and the picture- seller. 

 No fewer than thirty different processes have 

 been invented for taking photographs on 

 paper, though these, since the introduction of 

 the collodion and albumen processes on glass, 

 have been comparatively abandoned. 



Unlike steam, telegraphs, and railways, 

 the origin of photography is not involved in 

 obscurity. It is, in fact, one of the brilliant 

 discoveries of our own day and generation, 

 and dates from the beginning of the present 

 century. Its foreshadowing is by some very 

 imaginative people traced to those lines in 

 Milton, where he is supposed to hint at some 

 magic process of after-time, in which, 



" With one touch virtuous 

 The arch-chemic sun, so far from us remote, 

 Produces." 



Others, speculating on its origin, allege 

 that photography, in some rude form, was 

 known to the Indian jugglers. Suppositions 

 of an equally interesting and ingenious cha- 

 racter assert that our great mother Nature 

 was the authoress of all photography ; that 

 she it was who first placed it in the cradle of 

 discovery, where it was nursed by light, 

 and nourished on sunbeams. These and 

 other interesting photographic facts will be 

 illustrated more in detail by the anecdotes 

 that follow. 



There is a story that the first principles 

 of a peculiar photographic process were dis- 

 covered fifteen years ago by M. Bayard, on 

 the amber and purple surface of a peach. 

 Proud of his peaches, M. Bayard, it is said. 



