SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



extremely delicate and liable to injury before being 

 dried, but when once fixed and thoroughly hardened 

 were practically the same as modern glass negatives. 

 Still, there was a tendency for the film to peel from the 

 glass during the necessary manipulation, and this was 

 not overcome until the following year, when Frederick 

 Scott Archer, of London, discovered a means of remedy- 

 ing this by the use of collodion. This substance made 

 a film so tenacious that it could be handled without fear 

 of injury. Indeed, it may be said that it was this par- 

 ticular discovery, rather than the preceding, that made 

 commercial photography possible. 



While these various improvements in photographic 

 plates were in progress, lens-makers had been busy with 

 the improvements in cameras; and by the time the 

 Archer collodion plate was perfected there were good 

 cameras in which to use it. The entire process of 

 photography was still a complicated one, judged by the 

 modern standard of dry plates and "daylight devel- 

 opers"; but it required patience rather than skill or 

 scientific training, and within a few years after Archer's 

 announcement of his discovery almost every city, town, 

 and hamlet over the civilized world, had its " photograph 

 gallery." Indeed, the "craze" was quite as universal 

 at that time, as was the similar one half a century 

 later when the "push the button" snapshot-camera 

 came into existence. 



The cardinal defect of the collodion process lay in 

 the fact that the plates had to be freshly made and kept in 

 a moist state while using. This meant that the photog- 

 rapher could only operate near his dark-room labora- 



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