Annual Report of the Council. xxix 



he served in a bookseller's shop at Maidstone, then he obtained 

 employment in the survey of the Maidstone and Ashford 

 Railway, and, later on, became an insurance collector, and thus 

 came to Manchester, in 1855, as agent for an insurance company. 

 From the age of 16 he had been greatly attracted by the 

 then novel subject of photography, which was afterwards to form 

 the basis of his life's work, for when the insurance company 

 failed he pure ased a photographic business in St. Ann's Square 

 whicli had been started some few years before. At this time 

 photography had made little progress beyond the stage of the 

 Daguerreotype, which was followed successively by the old glass 

 positive, and, finally, printing on paper from a negative. 



Alfred Brothers soon became one of the recognized authori- 

 ties on photography, and his patience and ingenuity entitle him 

 to be considered as one of the pioneers in the development of 

 that branch of science. His interest in photography was perhaps 

 only equalled by his interest in astronomy, for he erected in his 

 garden, first at Upper Brook Street and afterwards at Wilmslow, 

 two fine telescopes made by Dancer, of Manchester. He is 

 said to have taken the first successful photograph of the moon, 

 and, in 1S70, he was selected as the Government photographer 

 to accompany the expedition sent to Syracuse to observe the 

 eclipse of the sun, and he obtained the first complete photo- 

 graph of the solar corona. He was also one of the pioneers in 

 stellar photography. 



Incidentally it is claimed for Mr. I'.rothers that he was the 

 first to produce magnesium ribbon and to apply it as an adjunct 

 in photography. In 1863 tbe manufacture of magnesium wire 

 was commenced in Manchester, and he experimented with it, 

 but found that the combustion was loo slow to make it effective 

 for photography. He one day tried passing a wire through the 

 rollers of a burnishing machine and so made the first magnesium 

 ribbon. One of the earliest applications he made with this was 

 to photograph the caves of the Blue John Mine at Castleton, 

 Derbyshire. 



