170 COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



credulity has been developed to such an extent, that no 

 announcement of present or future discovery, even 

 though the laws of Nature as at present interpreted, be 

 transcended, but finds a host of advocates and believers. 



The Keely motor, perpetual motion and aerial naviga- 

 tion, all have found many votaries. So rapid and 

 amazing have been the developments in photography 

 since Daguerre and Neipce's crude experiments that no 

 one seriously thinks of questioning the announcement, 

 that we are upon the eve of the discovery of a process 

 by which the colors of Nature may be successfully 

 transferred to the photographic plate. 



Within a year past a charlatan has successfully can- 

 vassed this city and vicinity for orders for color photo- 

 graphs, based upon the assertion that Nature's colors 

 are latent in the photographic image which is impressed 

 upon a silvered plate, and that his process simply 

 develops them in the printed picture. 



Of course no one, who has the most rudimentary 

 knowledge of the action of light upon a silvered plate, 

 would be deceived by such an arrant imposter, but the 

 fact of his success demonstrates the truth of the state- 

 ment that the public is not disposed to doubt any claim 

 of discovery which is plausibly made at the present day. 



I propose to submit a brief examination of what has 

 been accomplished in the way of so-called color photog- 

 raphy up to the close of 1892. 



To appreciate what has been thus accomplished pre- 

 supposes a knowledge of the process by which a photo- 

 graphic image is secured upon a sensitized gelatine 

 plate ; suffice it for the present purpose to say, that such 

 an image is the result of a molecular change in the body 

 of the sensitizing medium, caused by the action of light, 

 and varies according to the duration of the exposure. 



Light is described as an undulatory movement in a 

 highly elastic medium — ether. 



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