Suche löschen...
The photographic news
- Bandzählung
- 27.1883
- Erscheinungsdatum
- 1883
- Sprache
- Englisch
- Signatur
- F 135
- Vorlage
- Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
- Digitalisat
- Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
- Digitalisat
- SLUB Dresden
- Lizenz-/Rechtehinweis
- Public Domain Mark 1.0
- URN
- urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-db-id1780948042-188300004
- PURL
- http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id1780948042-18830000
- OAI-Identifier
- oai:de:slub-dresden:db:id-1780948042-18830000
- Sammlungen
- Fotografie
- LDP: Historische Bestände der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
- Strukturtyp
- Band
- Parlamentsperiode
- -
- Wahlperiode
- -
- Bandzählung
- No. 1284, April 13, 1883
- Digitalisat
- SLUB Dresden
- Strukturtyp
- Ausgabe
- Parlamentsperiode
- -
- Wahlperiode
- -
-
Zeitschrift
The photographic news
-
Band
Band
-
- Titelblatt Titelblatt I
- Register Index III
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 1
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 17
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 33
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 49
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 65
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 81
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 97
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 113
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 129
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 145
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 161
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 177
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 193
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 209
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 225
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 241
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 257
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 273
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 289
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 305
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 321
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 337
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 353
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 369
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 385
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 401
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 417
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 433
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 449
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 465
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 481
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 497
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 513
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 529
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 545
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 561
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 577
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 593
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 609
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 625
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 641
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 657
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 673
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 689
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 705
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 721
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 737
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 753
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 769
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 785
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 801
- Ausgabe Ausgabe 817
-
Band
Band
-
- Titel
- The photographic news
- Autor
- Links
- Downloads
- Einzelseite als Bild herunterladen (JPG)
-
Volltext Seite (XML)
photographs, which contributed most to establish the latter’s claim to share in the honour of the invention of photo- graphy. Still, to estimate the claims of an inventor or discoverer, is one of the most difficult of problems. Thus, while the discovery of photography, as meaning simply the impress of light upon certain bodies, is buried beneath the weight of centuries, we may well attribute to Nicephore Niepce the taking of the first camera photograph ; to Daguerre, the means to take the first permanent pictures—for Daguerreo types, if not absolutely permanent, are comparatively so ; while to Fox Talbot, last, but. not least, the world must give credit for securing photographs on a transparent medium, by means of which other photographs are produced—in a word, for giving us the germ of the photographic process which has been the most extensively employed by all. But these three philosophers do not at all represent latter-day photography ; other savans, too numerous to mention, have contributed knowledge scarcely less important to that furnished by Niepce, Daguerre, and Talbot, and unless the labours of this trio, illustrious as it is, had been so supple mented, we should still have but a very imperfect process of photography now-a-days at our disposal. For Niepce’s pic tures, produced on salts of silver in the camera were not fixed; Daguerre’s iodide of silver process (before bromo-iodide was suggested) was so slow that portraits could not be secured ; while it was not until the introduction of collodion and glass for negative photography that the process of Talbot became thoroughly vulgarised. It is very difficult, then, to apportion to every inventor his just due. Whether it is simply a question of honour or something more substantial, the task of fair allotment is beset with grave obstacles. When there are many claimants—and there usually are—how are we to estimate the value of their contributions? One man may be cited as the originator of an idea ; his claim to be the first who published the matter to the world cannot be disputed, and he asks, therefore, that we should render unto Csar what is Csar's by right. But was the idea taken up? ask other claimants. Is it not a fact that the memoir pub lished fell dead from the press, and that for a score of years after, not one voice—not even the author’s—was raised to point out the value of the suggestion ? Nay, more ; was the suggestion of any practical value? was it not simply a crude experiment, in which not even the experimentalist himself discerned any value ?—an interesting scientific result, may be, but not more so than hundreds of others tha t are published yearly. So later experimentalists will argue ; and, in fact, this is the sort of argument that has of late come up in respect to the telephone, the dynamo electric machine, and the incandescent electric lamp, just as it was in the case of the electric telegraph, the steam engine, the locomotive, &c., &c. Take the telephone as an example. Four or five years ago, Graham Bell came to this country with his wonder ful telephone. He lectured upon it, and demonstrated its wonderful action before every scientific body of eminence. He showed how, by the simplest of apparatus, the human voice could set throbbing an electric current through a vast length of wire, so that one person could make his voice heard to another several miles away. The invention, as Graham Bell brought it from America, was perfect in all its details; it was not only an ingenious and highly pleasing demonstration of electrical science, but it was at the same time an invention whose great use and high commercial value were apparent to the meanest capacity. Graham Bell’s telephone, it was at once evident, would be of incalculable worth as a simple and ready means of holding communication, and in a few months the clever American professor had found purchasers without number for his invention. Since Graham Bell’s instrument appeared before the public, Edison, Thomson, Varley, and others, have come forward with similar instruments, or with marked improvements on the original, and to-day we have loud-speaking telephones that not only convey the human voice, but magnify its sound greatly on reach ing its destination. But Graham Bell is not the inventor of the telephone. The honour of constructing the first instrument to carry tones is due to a German gentleman, Reiss, whose name, we see, has of late been coupled with the Thomson telephone. Herr Reiss undoubtedly made a telephone in 1861, and a description of it was read to the Physical Society of Frank furt in a paper “ On the Reproduction of Tones by Electro magnetic Means.” Reiss showed distinctly how certain tones could be transmitted through a wire by vibrations, or, what is the same thing, by the making and breaking contact very rapidly of an electric current; and anyone interested in the subject may still see woodcuts of the instru ment in the German electric manuals. In these circumstances, should Reiss’ name, and Reiss’ only, be attached to the telephone henceforth? Well, undoubtedly he was the first to suggest such a thing as telegraphing sound, but when it comes to connecting his name to the practical telephone in everyday use at present, one may well hesitate. And for this reason. Supposing, after Reiss had made his communication, no one else had taken up the subject; it did lie dormant ten or fifteen years. In that case, the memoir would have remained, like nine communications out of every ten made to learned societies, in the buried archives of the Frankfurt Society, and fifty years hence would have passed into the limbo of forgotten ness. For Reiss, valuable as his communication is, read by the light of the present day, attracted but little attention in scientific circles when he made his announcement. He had certainly no idea that his discovery would be the means of people talking to one another through twenty miles of wire; or, if he bad, he kept the idea locked up in his own breast. His research was a most interesting one, undoubtedly, but it was far from being the outcome of a practical instrument. It is one thing to make a telegraph wire transmit an audible sound, and another thing to be the means to carrying on conversation between two persons. Here, then, is another illustration of the difficulty of deciding between inventors. We do not know whether Graham Bell was cognisant of Reiss’ early experiment, but it is very likely that when he engaged in the work of transmitting sound by electricity, he collected all the data that had been published on the subject. Supposing he did this, as a scientific man should have done, there is never theless very great credit due to him for giving us a practi cal telephone. Somebody was required to elaborate the principle still further, otherwise we should never have had the instrument. For Reiss did not give us a practical tele phone at all. Indeed, we may fearlessly assert that Graham Bell was a benefactor to Reiss; for if the American experimentalist had not brought forward his telephone, the world would never have heard of his predecessor. The difficulty illustrated in apportioning to Reiss and Graham Bell their fair proportion of honour in the inven tion of the telephone repeats itself on every band. The dynamo-electric machine, of which Pacinotti appears to have been the original designer, has been claimed of late over and over again, and, of course, the latest improvements in this direction are vastly superior to the original Paci notti instrument. The incandescent electric lamp, we are now told, was invented twenty years ago ; but he would be a bold man who proposed to give all the honour and glory of the present day incandescent lamps to anyone who lived before the days of high vacuums. In photography, numer ous instances can be quoted in which it would not be fair to give all the credit to the first, any more than to the last, worker on improvements. Le Gray suggested collodion for photography, and Archer was the first to make practical use of it; but neither the one nor the other invented col lodion. Should not he who did this—Mr. Maynard, of Boston, whose name no one hears—be entitled to some
- Aktuelle Seite (TXT)
- METS Datei (XML)
- IIIF Manifest (JSON)