HF The History of Photography 600pág

Mammoth and miniature photographs
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of obtaining uniform depth of tone in all the sections had been successfully overcome.14
Nine years later BERNHARD OTTO HOLTERMANN, a German-born settler who
had made a fortune in the Australian gold-fields, exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition
in Philadelphia a panorama of Sydney 30 ft long, printed from six negatives
5 ft x Jt ft-the largest wet-plate negatives ever made. The pictures were taken by
CHARLES BAYLISS and himself from a specially built tower 74 ft high. The camera
had a lens of roo in. focal length, and was ro ft long. Holtermann and Bayliss carried
out the entire processing in its interior.15 It probably remained the largest photographic
panorama until I903, when the Germans boasted of having produced the
largest photograph in the world. This gigantic picture of the Gulf of Na pies, measuring
no less than 39 ft x 5 ft, was produced by the NEUE PHOTOGRAPHISCHE GESELLs
CHA FT of Berlin. The difficulties to be overcome were substantial, for this panorama
was to be made on one continuous sheet of paper. Big tanks had to be specially made
for the developing, fixing, and washing, and a little railway track constructed on
which to run them. The rinsing tank was 50 ft long x 6t ft wide x 2t ft deep. Six
rot in. x 8 in. negatives were each enlarged to about ( ft x 5 ft on to the sensitive
paper, but no darkroom was big enough for the processing, and it was decided to
carry out this work in the open air at night. The exposed paper was wound round a
huge wooden wheel 4I ft in circumference with a width of 5 ft 9 in. The tanks were
then pushed underneath, and the wheel lowered and slowly rotated. Only for the
final rinsing was the paper unrolled into the big water tank.16 The whole intricate
process was nicknamed 'Kilometer-Photographic'.
MINIATURE PHOTOGRAPHS
Jn recommending Heilmann's enlarger (1853) to the English public, SIR JOHN
HERSCHEL expressed the hope that it would lead to the fulfilment of an old idea of
his, of preserving public records, works of reference, maps, MSS., etc., on microscopically
small negatives made by very small photographic apparatus. The publication
of microscopic editions would then enable anyone with an enlarger to reproduce
them on a readable scale.17 Herschel's proposal for a microscopic reference library
had to wait 85 years for realization, for microfilm documentation was only begun on
a large scale under the threat of war, about I938, when the most valuable books in
the British Museum were copied on 3 5 mm. film, and some newspapers began to
arrange for film copies of their old volumes to be made available to libraries. Only
two exceptions in the nineteenth century are known to us ; in both cases valuable MS.
material was microphotographed as a safeguard against possible loss by fire. Shortly
after the Paris Commune PRUDENT DAGRON was asked to reproduce all the policies
of a Paris insurance company.1 8 The New York publisher of an encyclopaedia had
25,000 pages of manuscripts and illustrations reduced to 1i in. x 2 in. each, keeping
the negatives in a fireproof room.1 8'
Since the Second World War the new super-microfilm made a further hundredfold
reduction possible compared with pre-war film. By I950 all the volumes of The
Times from its first publication in 1788 to that date had been microfilmed on 85,000
ft of film stored in 958 small boxes which occupied only 16 cu. ft . Anyone who has
seen the ponderous original files will appreciate the convenience of this Lilliputian
version.19 Fifteen years later a still greater reduction became known : the 24,000 pages
of a 23-volume encyclopaedia were crammed on to a piece of film no larger than
5 cm. x 5 cm. For reading, a microscope capable of enlarging at least 2,000 times is
necessary. In the microprint system invented by ALBERT BONI of New York the
microphotographs are reproduced in print on small cards to be read in a desk viewer.
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