34 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



the condition of it as it is almost forty 

 years old). I know of no other complete 

 set in the United States, so this is rather 

 a relic, and it requires a good deal of care 

 in handling it for it almost falls to pieces, 

 (showing the apparatus). Here is where 

 the lens was put and in here is where the 

 plate holder was put. They first had to 

 fix the lenses in the ordinary way with 

 ground glass. Then they had a plate- 

 holder something like ours, that they put 

 the metallic plate in. Now having fixed 

 it, the next thing to do was to present to 

 the sitter this metallic plate, and I have 

 here one of just such plates. Now, into this 

 plate-holder are fitted "kits" as we call 

 them to hold different sized plates. Unfor- 

 tunately part of this apparatus is lost; i. e., 

 to say all these little details of kits, but 

 they could all be made out of little pieces 

 of wood. Now, the daguerreotype is this: 

 They take a silver-copper plate (a piece 

 of copper plated with silver. When they 

 first did this, they used to solder upon 

 copper plates a piece of silver, then put 

 it in a press and roll it out. After that 

 time, in latter years when the galvanic 

 battery had been discovered and was in 

 common use, they electroplated it). Now, 

 this particular plate was put into a holder 

 that was held like that. Now the small 

 boy was given one of the buffers or he 

 was put at a wheel that had upon it a 

 backing of felt and on the front of it was 

 chamois leather (it is now long gone on 

 this one — been rubbed off). This plate 

 was then rubbed with a great deal of 

 dexterity and you had to be very careful 

 that you did not scratch it. That was the 

 most important thing about them. It 

 spoilt the picture if you scratched them. 

 They had to be perfectly smooth. As I 

 said, this was sometimes done by hold- 

 ing the plate on a wheel, but the ordinary 

 way was by using one of these buffers. 

 The silver plate was taken out by un- 

 doing this screw at the corner. Now, 



the first thing to do with it, then, is to 

 make it sensitive. It is merely a silver 

 surface now It was made sensitive by 

 placing it in one of these boxes (showing 

 it) called coating boxes. Now that plate 

 was put into that box (showing the same 

 box), and see there is the lime in the box 

 and it is now probably forty years old, 

 having never been disturbed. In that 

 lime was placed bromine, and it was then 

 covered with a glass cover that fits over 

 this glass trough or dish — it is rather 

 deep. This was then placed with a little 

 pressure — in order to keep the box tight 

 and not let the bromine fumes get all 

 over the studio — and they put the plate 

 in here and pulled this over, so, leaving 

 it there a certain number of minutes, and 

 by action of the bromine vapor it becomes 

 coated with bromide of silver. Then they 

 either put some iodine into this same box 

 or they had an iodine box. After the 

 plate was in there a few minutes, they 

 took it out and put it in there and gave 

 it a dose of bromine. It was found, and 

 by whom I am not sure, that the addition 

 of a little iodine or a small proportion of 

 iodide of silver with iodine of silver gave 

 better effects. So it was then taken out 

 and it was sensitive to light. Now, 

 Daguerre discovered all that. This was 

 then put in the plate holder and exposed 

 in the camera and he got a picture. And 

 it bothered him a great deal, for it faded. 

 If he put thathypophosphite of sodium on 

 it that our friend Herschel discovered, it 

 cleaned the whole picture off. There 

 was not enough of it. So he watched 

 and watched and was weary with mak- 

 ing these pictures and having them 

 fade, until he went one day to a closet 

 where he had a lot of these pictures 

 stored, and he was delighted to see that 

 the picture of a certain monument (I 

 think it was) that he had made he 

 thought on that plate some time before, 

 and it was a good picture and a perma- 



