REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1914. 63 



Museum, and has ever since remained strictly in his charge as cus- 

 todian of the section pertaining to this subject. So unostentatiously 

 have his labors in seeking original pieces of apparatus from the 

 earliest dates and examples of the results of the various processes 

 been carried on, that only recently has the Museum itself come to 

 fully realize the importance of his efforts. The collection brought 

 together is without a parallel and so well is nearly every step shown 

 that it furnishes an excellent basis for an historical account of this 

 interesting art, on which the v.'orld now chiefl}^ depends for illus- 

 trative purposes. To the public at large, and even the casual visitor, 

 it has likewise a great attraction at this period when the camera is 

 so universally in vogue. The installation, begun about a year before, 

 was sufficiently advanced to be opened to the public late in June, 

 1913, but additions have since been made, and others are soon to be 

 expected. 



The exhibition of photography occupies the gallery of the north- 

 west court, which has a total length on its four sides combined of 

 209 feet 10 inches, and a width of 10 feet 3 inches. The north, west, 

 and south sides are provided with a continuous deep wall case, but 

 on the east side, where the large arched openings between the x:)iers, 

 overlooking the north hall, have not been closed, the cases are of 

 several floor patterns, the American, the half-unit slope top, and the 

 flat top. Elsewhere a number of floor cases of different kinds have 

 been placed alongside the outer railing. The light, which comes 

 from a skylight and clerestory windows, is entirely suitable. The 

 labels, though prepared, had not been printed at the close of the 

 year. They comprise individual labels for the objects, general labels 

 for the sections, and very full descriptive labels for the cases. 



The gallery is entered from the rotunda at the southeast corner 

 where the earliest objects are first encountered on the right. Thence 

 the order of arrangement is along the east, north, west, and south 

 sides to the point of starting. The collection begins with the camera 

 obscura, and in the several separate cases on the east side is extended 

 through quite a number of the early stages of photography. The 

 camera obscura, known to Euclid in a primitive form 300 years B. C, 

 was first used in photography by Thomas Wedgwood in 1802, 

 though experiments made in the eighteenth century tended in this 

 direction. Wedgwood produced silhouettes in white on a black 

 ground by the use of paper sensitized with a solution of silver nitrate, 

 and also obtained photographs of leaves, wings of insects, and other 

 objects on paper and leather sensitized in the same manner, but, as 

 no solvent had been discovered for the silver salts which remain 

 unaltered by light, these photographs all faded. The exhibit com- 

 prises a photograph of an engi-aving of the camera obscura as used 

 in the sixteenth century, a model of a camera obscura as improved 

 in 1875, and examples of the work of Wedgwood. 



