Speaker 1: Welcome, and thank you for visiting the Informatorium 56 podcast studio.

This location is dedicated to general education and information and features this podcast.

I am Greg Bell and my partner Julia Korony is here with me.

How are you today, Julia?

Speaker 2: I’m doing great.

I’m excited to hear about today’s topic.

Speaker 1: That’s good to hear.

Today, we are going to discuss the history of the Brownie.

More expansively, we…

Speaker 2: The cookie?

Speaker 1: No, the camera.

We’re going to discuss the camera.

Today, we’re going to discuss the history of the Brownie.

More expansively, we are going to discuss how history led to the Brownie.

It’s not going to be a three-hour thing on the Brownie.

We’re going to go back and go through time and see how we got there.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: The Brownie was a camera first made by Kodak in 1900.

It was really cheap, it was safe, and it was super easy to use.

Now, believe it or not, once upon a time, there were no photographs.

In 1820 and every year before that, exactly zero photographs were taken.

Speaker 2: That’s crazy.

Speaker 1: Of course, everyone realizes that.

But do we ever stop and think about how photographs changed our everyday reality? Think about history itself.

Until photographs, it was merely written words filtered through the mind of their writer.

The exact context of their making was never recorded, never in all of history.

Family albums were not a thing.

Sure, there were paintings, but those were only for a very talented few or the very rich who were able to pay the very talented few.

They were never a transcription of reality.

Speaker 2: Right, and normally they were just a recreation of the written word.

They were like, oh well, this is kind of what I imagine was there after reading this book.

Speaker 1: And with the photo, that changes.

You now have a tangible link to your own ancestors, your own history.

I mean, think of a photograph that is important to you, perhaps of a loved one.

Is it more of a picture or a memory? And that evolves over time.

Photos are no longer just documentation of the past.

They are how we present the present.

For so many people, life is lived and shared in still-life snippets.

I would argue that they are in many cases no longer even about documenting the past or the present or even reality for that matter.

Now, I think many people are obsessed with presenting a perfect reality.

And what is the medium for that? It’s the photograph.

It’s no longer about what happened before or after that photo or selfie was taken.

It’s just about the fact that the picture exists so it can be shared and liked and perhaps once in a while remembered.

We are so obsessed with photos that in 2020, over one trillion photos were taken and that number keeps going up.

Before photographs, this was not our reality.

Reality was different.

I think that as much as anything, photographs have created modern-day culture.

So how did we get here? Well, one big part of the answer is the Brownie camera, manufactured by the Eastman Kodak Company.

It was the culmination of a long journey.

Interestingly, in almost every aspect, an intentional journey of incremental steps across the centuries.

The journey begins merely as an attempt to cast an image on a wall for scientific purposes or later to draw an outline for a painting with a device called the camera obscura.

This evolves into a bold desire to do more than just see that outline, to capture light itself, to record an image.

Eventually, this leads to modern photography, an expensive and difficult and quite frankly rather dangerous profession, only for those who are very much dedicated to the craft.

And then there is a transition.

Owning a camera and taking pictures, or at least getting your picture taken, becomes desirable for people of means.

The tide is turning.

But that’s not going to get you to one trillion photos a year.

No, for that you are going to have to make cameras that everyone can afford.

The process will have to be super easy.

You have to make photographs for everyone.

In fact, you’re going to have to do all three of these things so effectively that you are going to change photography itself.

You are going to create the simple process of picture-taking.

And the man who succeeds at this is George Eastman.

And there is no more defining instrument of this process than the Kodak Brownie.

We will cover this story in two parts.

Today, the story of how trying to accurately record light evolves and photography is born as that expensive, unsafe, difficult profession or hobby only for the dedicated.

Then when photography hits the stage of what is called dry plate photography, we will see the transition to a process that is more attainable for the masses.

In the next episode, we will pick up there and take the turn towards what I am calling picture-taking, a cheap, safe, click of a button that is for everyone and has enormous cultural impact.

The process that will get us to the trillion photos a year.

Now, this is going to be a low-tech show.

I want to point out, as far as anything technical, we’re going to stick to the broad strokes because this isn’t a show about technicality, it’s a show about how picture-taking evolves and how we get to that point.

Now, many of the advancements are really interesting to me, so we’ll hit a lot of them, but I’m going to try to keep it as basic as possible.

So, the rundown for today’s show.

First, we’re going to start out with what I’m going to call pre-photography.

That’s the camera obscura, a little bit about light itself.

And next, what a camera actually is, at least for purposes of this story.

Then we will look at early photography, which as I said starts out as a desire to record an image and light itself and then leads to really important developments and creates the world of photography that is that expensive, unsafe, difficult task for professionals.

The steps we’ll cover include heliography, daguerreotype, calotype, wet plates, and dry plates.

There are of course some other steps in the actual process.

I think those are the major ones though that are really interesting.

And then we’ll wrap it up and next time we’ll get into Eastman and his Brownie and the birth of picture-taking.

So let’s jump into part one, the story of how trying to accurately record light evolves and photography is born.

And that story begins with the camera obscura.

The camera obscura.

What is it and how does it play into our story? Well, it’s really just a dark room with a hole in it that allows light to pass through it into the room.

So, room with a hole, light comes in from the outside into the room.

The reason it’s interesting and plays into our story is because this is the first device used to manipulate light to make an image.

Now, it’s not in any way permanent, but it is the foundation that leads us on that path.

So how does it come about? Why is it called a camera? Well, the word camera actually has a few meanings that precede the picture-taking device most of us think of when we hear the word.

One of those per Oxford English Dictionary is first recorded in 1663 as, quote, “an arched or vaulted roof, chamber, or building.” Also more generally, any room or chamber.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that’s how you say room in Romanian.

You say camera.

Speaker 1: Camera means room in Romanian?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense.

The word does evolve.

By the next year, they’re using it for a small chamber or cavity in a mechanism as part of the body, the shell, etc.

So if you think about it, you put those things together, the chamber, the mechanism, and turn out the lights, and you get a dark chamber, which is literally what camera obscura means.

So what is the significance of a dark chamber and putting a hole in it to make a camera obscura? Well, per Britannica, the earliest versions dating to antiquity consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole.

The result was that an inverted image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually whitened.

Speaker 2: Why would they do this? Why did they do it originally?

Speaker 1: I would think you basically just realized it was happening, you know what I mean? But I’m not sure.

I would think, you know, you just started to notice that like, hey, this room’s kind of dark and for some reason, you know…

Speaker 2: You’re just experimenting with light and dark?

Speaker 1: I’m not sure that they actually know who was like trying to come up with what in the first place, but I think it’s probably just one of those things where you notice it and then you start playing with it and you realize like, hey, there’s something here.

But so basically, if you seal the light out of a room except for the tiny hole, the little bit of light that gets through that hole will be projected upside down on the opposite side of the room.

And magically, the image that gets projected is whatever’s just outside that room.

Now obviously not magic, but it might as well be to me because I think this is kind of amazing.

I mean, it’s exactly what happens.

I know this for two reasons.

The first is that I trust science.

And the second is we actually tried this to see how it works.

Speaker 2: Right, you did it in the front room.

Speaker 1: I didn’t like dial it in, so to speak, but what we did was we took basically just a washer and some trash bags.

You can look this up on the internet to see how to do it.

It’s really not that difficult.

You basically just need the whole room to be pitch black.

So you have to blacken it out, like tape up whatever you can over the windows to make sure no light’s coming in.

If you have a door, you’re going to have to clog up any kind of crack.

It has to be like really dark.

And then you just take a small washer with like a few millimeter hole opening in the washer and then you just cut a little hole in your window, in the covering on your window, and tape that on there.

And then you just have that tiny little beam of light coming through.

And what happened was we got the image of the tree outside and it was upside down on our wall, on the opposite wall.

And it’s… it was really, you know…

Speaker 2: It was pretty neat.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s a really cool thing.

It wasn’t very clear.

Like I said, we didn’t have like lenses and everything else.

We were just trying to see if it… you know, how it actually worked so we could see it for ourselves.

And it was actually a really neat thing to see that that happens.

Now, when did people figure this out and what was it actually used for? Well, the origins date back to 400 BCE.

Now, a Chinese philosopher, it’s Mo-ti or Mo-zi, they pronounce it two different ways, M-O space T-I and M-O-Z-I.

Again, around 400 BCE, he records that this is a thing.

Now, it doesn’t… it’s not that he invented it or he came up with it or anything like that, but…

Speaker 2: He’s the first one that wrote it down.

Speaker 1: Exactly, he’s the first one that they have documented proof of it.

So, you know, clearly it predates him more than likely.

Now, Aristotle apparently used a camera obscura to watch a solar eclipse.

And many others did it for many other various scientific reasons.

Just mention Aristotle because that’s always interesting and it really gives you a sense of…

Speaker 2: Everybody knows who Aristotle is.

Speaker 1: And you throw your mind, you can always think how long ago that was at least in some perspective.

You’re like, so we’re talking about way back when, you know.

And Leonardo da Vinci, because it’s always Leonardo da Vinci, published a full description on the device in 1502.

Speaker 2: He’s a cool guy.

Speaker 1: Yeah, Leo’s always into everything.

And this leads us to the most directly relevant usage for the device and why it makes sense that cameras come to be called cameras.

Apparently, a bunch of people realized in the mid-16th century they could replace that hole with a lens and get a pretty clear image on their wall.

So instead of that, you know, mish-mashy like tree that we could see coming through that was just really dark…

Speaker 2: It was just shadows basically.

It wasn’t like crisp.

Speaker 1: Right, but if you put a lens on there and start playing with the amount of light that’s coming in, you come up with a pretty good image.

Which is to say, you could properly set up a room as a camera obscura to throw an image on a wall and then outline the image and then paint it.

And then this really helped you with the proportions and dimensions of your painting.

Speaker 2: Interesting.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so basically it gives you that outline and then you trace it on your canvas or whatever you have over there and then fill it in with your paint.

Tada!

Speaker 2: It’s the original light table that they have now for people to trace things.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

And then there, you know, you paint it in and you have your work of art.

And like I said, you know, it’s going to be a lot easier with the dimensions because that’s, you know, quite frankly, that’s a big part of making a good thing.

Speaker 2: And could you control the scale of things and like how much you could actually project with the lens?

Speaker 1: Yeah, they advanced it and actually scaled it down so they could do it in like a little box and everything like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2: Or you could catch more of an image from outside.

Speaker 1: Yeah, as I said, with the lenses and stuff like that, you can start to capture what you’re trying to do.

And you can play with the amount of light coming in, the size of the hole, and all that kind of thing.

Like I said, that’s kind of how I wanted to see it, just that’s why I wanted to make it.

Now, like I said, we didn’t get too carried away, but you can really dial these things in and they’ll make like little portable ones because, you know, camera obscuras are just like they make little small ones that you can make paintings in.

So that’s why it turns into a camera.

So like I said, portable versions were made and they even put in mirrors so you could then flip the image right side up.

So now you’re actually painting the image properly instead of having it being inverted when it comes through the hole.

Speaker 2: That makes sense so you don’t have to do like mental gymnastics in your head and figure out what’s going on.

You can actually just paint your image then.

Speaker 1: Now, as an aside, this actually led to a bit of controversy.

Apparently, some believe that Vermeer used such a device in at least some of his work.

Speaker 2: Scandalous.

Speaker 1: Yeah, at the time it actually was.

Speaker 2: I’m sure it was, yeah.

It’s like everything, you know, at the time, any sort of, especially in the art world, anything that’s like new, it’s always like frowned upon.

It’s like, well, you’re not a real artist because you’re using this.

Speaker 1: Or an advantage.

Yeah, it’s like when Photoshop came out, everybody’s like, you’re not an artist, and now that’s all anybody does.

Exactly.

But there’s, first of all, no direct evidence that he did this.

This isn’t something he admitted and it’s not like there was an investigation or anything.

But as an example, there’s a reason people think this.

He has a painting called “Officer and Laughing Girl.” And if you look at the painting, it’s basically a guy who’s obviously an officer, he’s got this big hat on, he’s sitting on the side of a table nearer to you in the painting.

And on the other side, there’s an image of this girl.

It’s clearly not a big table, but you can tell from the image that his head is like two times larger than hers.

So it’s really what it looks like when you take a photograph.

Speaker 2: Oh.

Speaker 1: Which we’re all used to now, we don’t really think about it, you know what I mean, like the dimensions being weird.

But at the time, you wouldn’t see this in anything.

So it’s like, where did he come up with this idea? Well, if he had projected this through a camera obscura, it would have come out that way.

Speaker 2: Oh, interesting.

I thought you were going to say it was upside down.

Speaker 1: No, yeah, he painted it upside down. “Uh, sir, you hung it the wrong way.” “He must have used a camera obscura, it’s upside down.” “I did not use a camera obscura on that painting.” “You hung it upside down.” “Yes, you did it wrong.” “It’s just modern art.

You’ll understand, your kids will be ready for this.” But now, at the time, the usage of this device, like I said, was controversial because they thought it was cheating.

But whether he did it or not, by the 18th century, it was in fact in use by other painters and as a device for making pictures.

So it’s obviously, you know, it turns into a thing.

So it’s really not that big a deal whether he did it or not, it’s just he’s a big name, so it makes it an interesting story.

Speaker 2: Well, and anytime anyone is a little more talented or has an extra thing, people will say it’s like, well, he must have done this because…

I mean, who knows? Maybe he did and…

Speaker 1: Maybe he did and he came up with that.

You know, maybe he saw the world that way, who knows? Maybe he had something wrong with his eyes, who even knows? Like El Greco, who saw everything like long.

Yeah, you can never go back and actually interpret what happened.

It’s just when you see that image, the dimensions, it does look kind of like a photograph.

But obviously, this is the direct antecedent of our modern-day camera and that’s why it is so because, you know, if you’re making pictures and painting them, the next step is to start recording them.

So with that being said, let’s look at some of the basics of how light works before we go on.

Because we’re about to go from people tracing images on a wall or with a small device, like I said they made smaller camera obscuras, to people actually capturing light itself, which again, it just is amazing to me.

You can become jaded to these things, but if you put yourself back in time like that and you’re like, you know, what would be neat? I don’t know how you even start to do it.

You’re just like, you know, what I want to do here is the light comes in, what if I just have it stick to the wall?

Speaker 2: There’s got to be a way to make this stick.

Speaker 1: I mean, it’s amazing.

Like you’re just like, I’m going to do… and we’re going to see, like a lot of it’s on purpose and a lot of it is just trial and error and it’s an amazing story that just goes on through the centuries, like I said.

So how is it that this image is going to get through our camera obscura as a visible image? Because like I said, I’m not great with science, let’s say I’m not great with physics, the physics of light, any of these things, optics.

Neil deGrasse Tyson not answering his emails apparently, so he’s not going to be here today.

So we’re going to keep this super simple and basic.

Just the best I can understand it, simplest compilation, just because it does kind of make you understand how this whole thing works.

Here it is.

Basically, we do not see unilluminated objects themselves.

Right?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: They don’t have inherent color either.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Rather, what we see is the light that gets reflected off of them.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: The reason they have colors is that we actually only see the part that is reflected when we’re looking at it.

So for example, the reason a banana is yellow is because the banana absorbs the spectrum of light that our eyes can pick up on except for the yellow.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: So you have something giving off light, let’s say the sun.

This light comes down, hits the object, let’s say our banana.

The banana absorbs all the visible colors except yellow, which bounce off, goes into our eyes through our pupils and hits light-sensitive cells called photoreceptors, allowing us to see both the banana and determine the banana is yellow.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Exactly.

Speaker 1: So again, not…

Speaker 2: I’m not an expert on this either but I actually do know that from being in art school.

Speaker 1: Right, exactly.

So like I said, not super complicated.

But obviously, this is how the camera’s going to work as well.

So just to get that cleared up, you know, that’s how you’re getting the shades and the depth and all that is by it bouncing off and going in and hitting your eyeballs.

Now, the difference being instead of light bouncing through your pupil, it’s bouncing through the hole in your camera obscura.

Light bounces off the objects outside, goes through the hole, hits the back wall.

So really, to make a camera, you just have to come up with a way to record that light hitting the back wall, which leads us to what is a camera.

Well, for purposes of our story, again, the simplest possible.

And it doesn’t get any simpler than this.

A camera is just a box.

Just like our camera obscura.

It’s a light-tight box with a hole in it.

You can open the hole and let light in so the light hits the back of the box.

That’s it.

Speaker 2: Got it.

Speaker 1: I mean, it really can’t be much simpler, right?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Now, there’s all kinds of things that you can do with the camera.

You know, you can change the size of the hole, you can change how long the hole is open, how much light you want to get in, the mechanism used for the hole, you can put lenses to focus the light, you know, you can make the box bigger, you can do all kinds of things to the… obviously there are 45 million different kinds of cameras in the world.

But in reality, it’s just a box.

That’s all you really need.

As evidenced by the camera obscura.

The picture is just that light recorded.

You have your camera, you have your picture.

That picture is just the capture of that light that’s hitting the back of the box while the hole was open.

It’s just like the photosensitive cells in your eye, right? Like the back of the box has a light-sensitive material and that’s it.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Now, depending on what process you are using, again, the thing on the back can be your final product, as in, you know, the picture’s directly recorded to it.

It can be a negative that, you know, like film we know it today, where you have to take it then and, you know, flip it around…

Speaker 2: Develop it.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Or it can be a plate, it can be film…

Speaker 1: But basically, either way you put it, there’s just something on the back of the wall that’s light sensitive and captures the light coming through the hole in your box.

Now you’re going to try and make it as clear as possible and do all these things, but for purposes of going through this podcast, I just think it’s important to point those things out because it really clarifies a lot of things that we’re going to talk about because we’re going to go through all the steps they came up starting with just like I said trying to capture any kind of light and then getting all the way through to making, you know, we want to make this better and you know…

Speaker 2: Making color photographs.

Speaker 1: No, we’re not going to get into color photographs.

Speaker 2: Oh no, I figured that, but I just mean like, you know, just you talking about that made me think of like, well, how did they even get the color photographs from that?

Speaker 1: Exactly.

I did read about that a little bit.

And that’s what I’m saying.

It’s like so you you can get into like there’s 45 million different things you could do, but just as you’re following along to make it easier to pay attention and understand what I’m talking about, um, just and also easier for me to explain it, of course.

It’s just really in the end…

Speaker 2: It’s just a box.

Speaker 1: It’s a box with a lens and it’s got a thing on the back that just that light’s going to hit and it’s going to it’s going to absorb into it, going to make your picture.

Right.

And because like I said, you know, in modern cameras, there’s so much going on, you know what I mean? Like if you’re into cameras and everything like that, you know…

Speaker 2: Right.

You got the aperture, you got the exposure, you got…

Speaker 1: Yeah, not that this isn’t the show the show for you, just that we’re not going into that, you know what I mean? We’re not we’re not a masterclass on photography.

Yeah, because you can, you know, change the shutters like I said, you can change like you said the aperture…

Speaker 2: The shutter speed.

Speaker 1: But the ones we’re going to be talking about are going to be very basic because we’re not getting past like the 1920s other than just explaining a few things that came about spawning out of the things we’re specifically talking about.

So in the end, very simple.

We’re talking about cultural impacts of the camera and the technological technological advances that get us there in the very basic means.

Camera’s a box with a hole in it, light travels through, hits the back of the box.

Picture a picture is just a representation of the light hitting that back wall.

Now, that is not to say it’s not amazing.

I mean it really is.

I mean, I barely understand how light works, I other than just trying to like understand it enough to explain simply for the purpose of this camera.

It is difficult to wrap your brain around it when you really think about it.

Go, yeah, we don’t this doesn’t even have color, we see that.

I mean, when you actually sit down and try to understand these things, like what’s actually happening, it’s one thing to read it and be like, yeah, that makes sense.

It’s another thing to like grasp the concept which I’m not going to pretend to do.

Um, but what we have coming up here are people who are like, yeah, I’m going to figure this out.

I’m going to capture that that light.

I’m going to make a picture.

I’m going to record light.

And I think it’s amazing.

So let’s get to the heart of our story, which as I said, starts as that desire to record an image in light itself and then leads to really important developments and creates the world of photography that is an expensive, unsafe, difficult task for professionals.

And we’re going to start the journey to capturing light with heliography.

Do you know anything about heliography, Julia?

Speaker 2: I do not.

Speaker 1: This was not covered in art school?

Speaker 2: No, this was not covered in my photography class.

Speaker 1: No, you just took one photography class.

Speaker 2: I did.

It was and it was, you know, with the actual film and because I went to college a while ago.

And, you know, you had to do the exposure and then you went to develop to develop everything.

And then when you develop the picture, you know, you could uh, I forgot what it’s called, I think it’s called dodge and something because they actually named tools in Photoshop in what you do in photography.

Speaker 1: Yeah, blur and dodge and smudge and all that.

Speaker 2: Right.

And you would like shake this thing if something was overexposed, so you wouldn’t so you’d darken it while you’re, you know, you’re exposing the picture.

It was it was fun.

Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like after that explanation I can go make some make some pictures on my own.

I think that was a long time ago that class, huh?

Speaker 2: That was.

That was a long time ago.

I don’t even think you can even do that anymore.

Speaker 1: Oh, no, they still have photography classes.

Speaker 2: You had the darkroom.

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they have them.

It’s just a special you have to be like, you know, you have to really be into it.

You’re not going to I don’t know if you’re going to get it for just like a general I’m I want to go to an 18-month, uh, you know, tech school and learn how to do Photoshop.

Speaker 2: So, like my art school where I went to to school, I think that photography photography department actually got rid of like a dark camera and and doing that.

Speaker 1: A darkroom? They don’t have a darkroom?

Speaker 2: I don’t believe so.

When they moved the schools in the building and everything, I think they got rid of that.

Speaker 1: Well, I mean, one way or the other, you can still learn it.

I just, yeah, maybe not in the context of a university.

Speaker 2: Well, because they looked at it and it was like, well, this is just, you know…

Speaker 1: We’re not doing this anymore.

Speaker 2: Right, like pointless.

It’s not going to, you know…

Speaker 1: Yeah, but it is still very fun.

Speaker 2: But it it is fun and it it’s a neat thing to learn and, you know, but then you run into chemicals.

There’s all these chemicals that you have to use and, you know, they have to be kept in in the dark and you can’t, you know, and they’re still toxic, you know, it’s not great.

Speaker 1: Yes, and we are going to get to all that.

That’s like I said, you know, it it starts out as a very dangerous process and there is no safe way to do it.

But let’s look at heliography.

Speaker 2: What is heliography, Greg?

Speaker 1: That’s a good question.

Heliography is how we are going to get our very first photograph.

In approximately 1826, a Frenchman named Joseph Niépce creates it with a process and he calls it heliography.

But as is often the case in the journey of photography, really, there were…

Speaker 2: He’s not the first one.

Speaker 1: No, there’s just a lot of steps that get to that point.

It he is the first one.

He is definitely credit credited with it and there’s there’s no mistake about that.

It’s just that there’s photography the way it works is there’s like five million things that happen and then one guy is the last step and then it’s like that guy did it.

You know what I mean? So it’s like it’s a long gradual progression.

And I actually have a quote that kind of explains that.

There’s a gentleman named John Szarkowski, apologize if I’m pronouncing that wrong, but he wrote a book on photography.

And he says, “The progress of photography has been more like the history of farming with a continual stream of small discoveries leading to bigger ones and in turn triggering more experiments, inventions, and applications while the daily work goes on uninterrupted.” So, basically it’s just going to be these little incremental pieces and people are are doing them intentionally.

So it’s you know, it’s not like they’re not being discovered.

It’s not like they’re not making these huge discoveries.

I mean, but it is just, you know, steps along the way.

That’s why I said there’s a bunch of steps, but I’m going to stick to the main ones.

Speaker 2: Gotcha.

Speaker 1: So let’s set the scene of what Niépce, it’s N-I-E-P-C-E by the way, um, but I looked it up and it’s pronounced Niépce.

Speaker 2: So we’re in France, 1826.

Speaker 1: Yes.

So let’s look at what he was working off of when it comes to his time to shine.

Well, we said for thousands of years people knew about the camera obscura phenomenon, light passing through a small aperture into a dark chamber projects the outside scene on the opposite wall.

Well, it was also known for hundreds of years at this point that certain silver salts darken when exposed to the sun.

And in 1719, a German physicist, Johann Schulze, proved that it was actually the light causing this to happen, not the heat.

Speaker 2: Oh, okay.

Speaker 1: So with this knowledge, you can see why in 1802, Thomas Wedgwood, an Englishman, tried to combine these things into one process.

Camera obscura, silver salts, and made the first attempt at making a photograph by sensitizing leather and paper with silver nitrate.

Unfortunately for Thomas, he could only get silhouettes of objects to record on the paper and more importantly, he was not able to make them permanent.

So, he doesn’t really get credit with making a photograph, which to be fair, the first photograph’s not…

Speaker 2: Well, he didn’t.

Speaker 1: Right, the first one’s not super great either, but it is permanent, so they kind of, you know, he gets he wins the prize for that.

So here comes Joseph Niépce.

For some reason, everybody refers to him as Nicéphore.

That’s actually his middle name as far as I can tell.

I don’t know why his first name got dropped.

I don’t understand it, but whenever everybody says it…

Speaker 2: Well, he was probably like, “Oh, don’t call me that.” I don’t know. “Call me Nicéphore.”

Speaker 1: Joey was a pretty interesting fellow.

He and his brother actually invented an internal combustion engine in 1807.

Speaker 2: Oh wow.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s no small feat.

Uh, more relevantly, he was also into lithographic printing.

He couldn’t get a hold of the materials to do this where he lived, so he thought, “Hey, maybe I can skip this process and find a way to use light to make copies of images.” So he tries old Thomas’s trick of using paper coated with silver chloride and gets images, but just like Thomas, he he can’t make them stick either.

This is the process called fixing the image, uh, which is a big part of photography.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: We’re not going to get into it too much, but basically after you take your picture, you have to freeze it and get it stuck there because it can just keep developing.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Um, but this is the part that makes it permanent, which basically ongoing struggle, but it’s almost exclusively chemistry.

Like I said, so we’ll just kind of glaze over most of it or, you know, go past most of it.

But eventually he comes up with another idea.

How he came up with this, I have no idea.

But according to the Science and Media Museum, quote, “He dissolved bitumen of Judea, a kind of asphalt…”

Speaker 2: I was like, I don’t even know what that is.

Speaker 1: Don’t know what that is. “…in a solvent and coated a pewter plate with the resulting solution.

When exposed to light in a camera obscura, the bitumen became hard and insoluble.

After exposure, the plate was washed in lavender oil and turpentine, which removed the soft unexposed bitumen, leaving a permanent image created by light.”

Speaker 2: Interesting.

Speaker 1: Another source said this took about eight hours of exposure.

And now, the image is pretty blurry, but that’s not really important.

With this he is credited with creating the first permanent photograph.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Obviously, enormous step.

Amazing thing that he accomplished.

Like I said, I don’t know how he came up with that whole process.

They, you know, obviously these guys are working on this stuff for a long time.

But amazing, we have an actual picture.

Of note is the fact that he used pewter, um, and he did this because pewter was sturdy and remember his actual goal was making prints, which he was able to do with his images.

I mean, this is like, yeah, this is like amazing, right?

Speaker 2: So he’s trying to make something that he then can like do a print of so he can quote put like ink on it and then imprint it or…

Speaker 1: Well, he’s trying to make copies.

Like he’s trying to print something off, right? So he’s into lithographic copying things, so he wants to make prints and make a bunch of them.

Right.

So that’s that’s what he’s trying to do.

So that’s why he’s using the metal because it’s stronger because like he can just keep doing it, you know what I mean? Um, and what’s amazing about the whole thing is this guy did the whole process.

I mean, he uses a camera obscura, so he has the camera.

He has the image recorded with the light-sensitive material and then he’s able to make copies.

I mean, this is the actual goal for the next 75 years.

Now, he did spend years doing this.

Like I said, it there’s a lot of trial and error.

It’s just kind of an ongoing thing.

Just trying things, trying to make them happen.

These people, whether they consider themselves chemists or not, they are not chemists by anything we would recognize as a chemist today.

So this is a lot of just brute force trying to come up with these things.

Speaker 2: Well, at least he wasn’t trying to make gold.

Speaker 1: No.

Well, he may have been in his spare time, we don’t know.

Um, but the process of making light-sensitive material for recording images will continue to be seemingly more magic than science for years to come.

Even after Eastman is producing transparent film in 1889, which we’ll get to in the next episode, uh, which is basically what we think of as film today, it’s going to be years before they actually have a consistent working process for making that film due to the vagaries of chemistry involved in the process.

There are simple, subtle things uh to the science that they just don’t have the ability to grasp.

Which is why accomplishing this initial stage in 1826 is is all the more astounding.

I mean, this is the guy to do it first.

He captures light.

I just I can’t, like I said, I can’t imagine how amazing that must have been.

Like I said, his process, it just wasn’t clear enough to be a usable product.

So it’s going to take a lot more people before we get to our popular form of photography that we’re looking for.

A lot of ups and downs.

Speaker 2: Well, he also doesn’t have it on paper quite yet, right? He just has it on metal.

Speaker 1: No, no, and it’s like actually the whole process kind of goes away though because it just altogether isn’t going to work to make a clear image.

So, but yeah, no, he is doing it on metal, which is not how we continue to do things, obviously.

Now, let’s look where does this put us? Well, basically you have two things going on here.

You have the camera obscura which throws an image on a wall and you have light-sensitive material which change when the light hits them.

And this process by Niépce is how those divergent concepts were first joined to make a camera.

So we have the process completed.

You know, the world now knows it possible.

But if we are going to get to our functional process of capturing light that’s going to turn into photography as we know it, we’re going to need a more effective process.

And the next huge step in that process quickly comes by the hands of Louis Daguerre.

Do you know anything about Louis Daguerre?

Speaker 2: Is this the the guy that came up with the daguerreotype?

Speaker 1: The daguerreotype.

Yes, the daguerreotype is exactly what this guy came up with.

Speaker 2: That’s a tongue twister.

Speaker 1: Um, before we move on though, I do think it’s interesting to note just a quick perspective of the overall process.

We are talking about a process with a lot of steps.

Again, from one perspective this takes thousands of years.

But from here on, the time frame isn’t really that long.

I mean, if you go by the way I see it, it starts with the first photo in 1826 to dry plate photography which we’ll see has all the basics of modern photography by the end of the century.

And even the Brownie, which many like me consider the birth of popular photography, begins production in 1900.

So timewise this happens fast.

I mean, we’re going to talk about a lot of things going on, but I do want to point out just an overall arching timeline there.

It is kind of amazing.

Speaker 2: And I wonder how many people were working on this overall, you know.

We just get the one, you know like you said, we get the one or two names that actually were like successful, but how many people trying to do this stuff?

Speaker 1: There’s a ton of people trying to do this stuff.

Speaker 2: It’s like this guy did this, this guy this did this, but this guy put it together so he gets…

Speaker 1: Exactly.

He’s the one who gets the name.

But like I said, lots of steps and the next step is the daguerreotype.

So let’s find out what Louis Daguerre adds to our process on the path to modern photography.

Speaker 2: Is he also French?

Speaker 1: French, yes.

Louis is obviously French as well.

So let’s meet Louis.

Not only is he French, he actually collaborated with Niépce prior to Niépce passing.

Niépce passed in the interim here.

Uh, Louis comes to study capturing of light by way of being a painter.

So he painted in the romantic style and even gained reputation as the owner of a diorama in Paris.

Do you know what a diorama is?

Speaker 2: Is isn’t that the um images that like move in like a circle?

Speaker 1: Well, in his case he actually so yes, diorama, I I mean you make dioramas when you’re in elementary school, I think, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2: You did.

Speaker 1: Right, so but in his case his diorama is actually a building.

So he actually has huge uh painted scenes with lighting effects.

So you would walk in, you know, this is like kind of before you got movies going and all that.

So he’s like you walk in and you would just see these cool images and there’d be lights going around.

So at the time it was a bit of an attraction.

In the 1820s he starts trying to find a way to capture images projected in his camera obscura.

In 1829, Niépce hears about Daguerre and they start working together.

So that’s how he gets involved into the process.

So what does Louis come up with to make himself and his daguerreotype part of the journey? He’s going to give us a faster and more accurate form of photography than Niépce.

And one that actually gains an amount of appeal and market.

So that’s going to be a first that there’s actually people using this product.

He continues his work after Niépce passes and comes up with a new process, the final incarnation being pretty much completely original from the heliography.

He even gets a benefactor who helps finance his experiments and gets him a spot to demonstrate his creation at the French Academy of Sciences.

Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say the World’s Fair.

Speaker 1: Everything happens at the World’s Fair.

The World’s Fair does show up, don’t worry.

No, it’s going to be a World’s Fair.

No matter what we do, we got to end up at the World’s Fair.

And by the time of the presentation at this French Academy of Sciences, it is such a big deal, people come from all around to hear about it.

So, at the French Academy of Sciences on August 19th, 1839, he explains his process, which I will allow the metmuseum.org to explain for us.

If you notice when we get into the scientific stuff, I usually like to quote things so it’s like they know what they’re talking about. “Each daguerreotype is a remarkably detailed one-of-a-kind photographic image on a highly polished silver-plated sheet of copper sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a large box camera, developed in mercury fumes, and stabilized or fixed with salt water or quote unquote hypo parenthesis sodium thiosulfate.” End quote.

Speaker 2: So basically… that’s a lot.

That’s a lot to… how did they even get there? I know, it’s amazing. “You know what I need? Bring me the iodine.”

Speaker 1: Yeah, I need the hypo.

But basically, he has his box, his camera, and where the light hits the back of the box, he has his light-sensitive material, in this case silver-plated sheet of copper that is sensitized with iodine vapors.

So the light goes through the box and the plate is exposed.

Then he fixes it, i.e. remember stops it, uh stops the sensitivity, making the image permanent with salt water.

Speaker 2: Wait, and what were the mercury fumes doing?

Speaker 1: Yeah, they’re you’re going to find out.

Uh, besides killing and… yeah.

And this is where we begin to see a significant widespread cultural impact.

And the reason is they are faster, they are more accurate and clear, and they gain a level of appeal.

I mean, there’s no doubt about these images are much clearer than their predecessor, the heliograph.

If you look at the heliograph, there’s one picture uh from that, the original, uh I think if I remember correctly the original one is not around, but there’s like a couple that he made.

And it’s really just this like shadowy image and it’s, you know, not to take anything away from it, but it’s not going to be, you know, a consumer product.

Uh, but I mean, these are real pictures.

It’s amazing.

They are renowned for their detail.

Speaker 2: That’s awesome.

Speaker 1: They honestly almost look like 3D.

It’s really clear and it’s got really sharp outlines.

I mean, remember this is like the first actual nice pictures that were taken.

Um, but if you look at it, you we have an example of one here that I just showed Julia, uh and you can see the woman’s face, right? Like what do you see when you look at this? Like what do you what do you…

Speaker 2: Right, you can see you can see all the little details in the ribbon and in her hair, even like the folds in her her outfit.

That’s pretty that’s pretty crisp.

Speaker 1: It’s basically just a portrait.

It’s, you know what I mean? Other than the color, it it’s really like kind of a modern-day portrait, right?

Speaker 2: Yes.

I feel like people now use filters to get this look.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does.

I think there’s probably a popular thing they do.

Yeah.

Now, apparently the mercury vapor exposure helped this happen.

Speaker 2: Oh.

Speaker 1: Uh, and this is also of course a good example of the dangerous unsafe part of early photography that I mentioned.

Remember, you know, it’s like we start out like I I say it a few times, but really it’s kind of amazing, you know, it’s like you start out with this really expensive, unsafe, uh complicated process that nobody uses and the point is to flip that stuff around and make it the opposite.

Now, I’m not going to get into the health effects, uh you can look them up on epa.gov, uh but suffice it to say mercury vapor not a good thing.

So definitely…

Speaker 2: But also how they even how who I mean, I’m sure one of the guys in the along the way in all the many steps that you had mentioned was like, “Oh, you know what? Mercury vapor.

Let’s like boil this mercury and make vapor.”

Speaker 1: Exactly.

But like I said, you know, this is what we’re dealing with at the time.

So this is not going to be for your average Joe.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and they’re not concerned about their their health.

Speaker 1: But yeah, inventors are trying to come up with things.

Also who knows if they understood.

Speaker 2: There’s like, “Oh, this is not going to kill me.

Look how fun it is.”

Speaker 1: Yeah, they probably didn’t know the ramifications.

So.

Speaker 1: Now, these are, just as an aside, these are not color images.

If you do see one of these or want to look them up and see how neat they are, there are a bunch of them that are color, but that’s because they painted them.

People basically went back and painted them to make them look like they, you know, were photographed, like paintings instead of photographs.

So, they are faster.

They are, in fact, detailed images and rather valuable today.

Speaker 2: So how much faster? So the guy, Niépce, was eight hours.

Speaker 1: Right.

Now, we’re not fast enough that you’re going to start seeing people smiling.

If you notice, this woman’s smile is markedly absent.

One of the things about the exposure time early going is that it’s always going to be longer than you can possibly sit there and smile comfortably.

So, no smiling.

But that does not mean that they weren’t fast.

They were much faster.

In fact, the original version took three to fifteen minutes of exposure.

Speaker 2: Oh, that’s a lot faster.

Speaker 1: Right.

And when we say exposure, we mean like the taking your picture part, when the material’s being exposed to the light when you take the picture.

Speaker 2: It’s from when the guy removes the whatever’s blocking the camera obscura to putting it back in.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

And eventually, he actually gets it down to under a minute, which from eight hours is pretty awesome.

Yeah, so this is a huge leap forward.

Like I said, still not going to be smiling.

I mean, you’re not going to be able to stay still and make it come out good, but it’s a huge leap.

Speaker 2: And that’s some of those old pictures when you see like the blurred head, they’re like creepy looking.

It’s just the guy moving during the exposure time.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Like it’s just not going to work.

Like you can’t, you know, you might think like, “Oh, I could sit still,” but we’re talking about the fine images.

Like that’s why these have these fine lines to them because they’re sitting perfectly still.

Speaker 2: Or even having like a little kid, trying to take a picture of a little kid, that would be impossible.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I’m sure there are a ton of these that got thrown away because it just didn’t work, you know.

Okay, and also interestingly, not only are they good, but like I said, the pictures themselves are a hit.

You know, it starts off in France, of course, because that’s where they were made, but people love this.

You know, you can have a portrait taken.

I can’t really imagine what that must have been like for the first time.

You know, we just grow up in these things.

But back then, you know, you were forty years old and somebody comes up and says, “Hey, you know what I can do?” You’re like, “Get out of here.

Like what? No, this is not a thing.” So just the concept, like just even seeing one must have been amazing, let alone getting one taken of yourself if you could afford it.

And it soon spreads around the world.

There’s an American named John Plum Jr.—don’t want to leave that off, want to give credit to his dad—and he seems to have been smitten with this daguerreotype thing right away.

He was a civil engineer, and in 1840 he opened a studio in Boston.

In 1841, he creates the United States Photographic Institute in Boston and starts opening photographic depots, which were photo galleries.

I mean, again, this is a thing that didn’t exist.

So now you’re going to have galleries with photographs in them and people can go see these new wonders of the modern age.

And popularity takes off.

By 1859, there were eighty daguerreotype studios in New York City alone.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: And also kind of cool, I thought, traveling vans brought cameras to smaller towns.

Like people would get in these little caravans so people had a strong interest in this.

They would come out and be like, “Hey, look what we got.

Pictures, get your picture taken,” all this stuff.

You know what I mean? It’s like a little show.

So you can see this is going to be a part of culture moving forward, and that’s one of the big steps here.

As for the camera itself, there were other brands, but we will stick with the officially licensed Daguerre version, thank you very much, because anything less is just, you know, it’s uncivilized.

Let’s not dredge those depths.

But seriously, we do see the birth of camera branding right away, which is a big thing when it gets to the Brownie.

A man named Giroux licensed the ability to make Daguerre’s camera by making a deal with Daguerre and actually Niépce’s niece, because he still had some kind of legal right to the process.

And he puts a seal on the camera with Daguerre’s signature indicating that this was the real deal Daguerre camera.

So you can see pictures of these.

Basically, it looks like a camera.

You know what I mean? Again, it’s a square wooden box with a protruding lens on the front, and you put your silver-coated plate in the back.

So basically just a little box, holds a plate in the back for your picture.

Speaker 2: And this is still just for like professionals, for someone that wants to do like a studio thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, I mean you can buy them, but I’ll explain the process a little bit because it’s a lot going on.

So like I said, it looks like a camera, and when you purchase it, you get the box, the lens, the plate, you get the plate holder, the iodine, which you need to prep the plate, and you get a mercury box to develop the picture in.

Speaker 2: Gotcha.

How big is it? Like I’m just wondering, is it like—because you’re talking about the people with the caravans and stuff—is it portable or is it still like you still need the stands because you can’t hold it there for like three minutes?

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you’re going to need—these are heavy.

So I don’t have the exact dimensions on all of the cameras, but this makes a six-by-five-by-eight-by-five-inch picture, okay? Which means that back wall is eight-by-five wide, which means the dimensions of it are going to be—it’s going to be at least nine inches long.

It’s made of wood.

It’s got this heavy metal thing in the front, and then you’re taking the plate and you’re jamming it in the back.

So you know, it’s going to get—it’s too heavy to stand there holding, and that is a recurring thing.

Like you’re going to have—it’s going to be an issue that to make cameras more popular, you obviously have to make them lighter because you need to travel with all your materials, you need the tripod, you need all kinds of stuff to make this happen.

Now, they get a little bit bigger than this, but this process was basically, you know, it was a little bit more simple.

It does vary as we go through time, the complexity, the materials you need, how much is going on.

Speaker 2: Not to mention that cloth that they would put over themselves.

You know, you see the old-timey—

Speaker 1: Yeah, when you think of like a picture being taken in a movie and you’re like, “Oh, there’s a cameraman at the O.K.

Corral for some reason,” you know what I mean, like in the movie.

And it’s like all this stuff has to be like light-tight.

We’re not at the point—and it does come way in the future where they have systems where you don’t have to worry about that as much—but the time period we’re talking about, that’s always going to be a problem.

So you have to keep everything covered up, and that’s a big part of the process.

Now, like I said, this is a large system.

It comes in a trunk.

So you buy it and it’s thirteen pounds.

And like I said, it’s going to make those images six and a half by eight and a half.

But you get everything you need.

You know, you get the box, the lens, the plate holder, iodine, which again used to prep it.

You get your mercury box to develop the picture in, which you know, obviously not a problem at this time period, you just ship that out in the mail, I guess.

But it’s a successful item.

It is a profitable product right away, and other products follow.

Now, there are new daguerreotype cameras being released into the 1850s.

And just to keep up with the overarching timeline, like I said, let’s just take a quick review of that cheap, easy, safe, and is it for everyone process that I’m following through the time frame here.

Easy and safe? No.

I mean, these things are crazy complicated.

They use chemicals.

You’re definitely not going to get into this half-hearted and have any kind of success.

And again, mercury vapors.

So this is a big no.

Are they cheap and for everyone? First, let’s look at the pictures.

No.

Getting one taken is expensive.

One site says that it’s up to six dollars, which according to the Consumer Price Index calculator is two hundred and seventeen dollars in today’s money.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but it’s still cheaper than getting a painting done.

Speaker 1: I do think, like I said, when you consider—exactly, that is the counterpoint that I was going to make.

I totally agree.

When you consider the only other way to get the picture is having someone paint it—again—

Speaker 2: And he may not even make it look like you.

Speaker 1: Right.

Another thing that’s hard, exactly, it’s not going to be an exact image.

But I did find a source—it’s really hard also to find that—but I came upon one source that said you could get a miniature drawing by just an untrained person that you can get really cheap for like a couple bucks.

But that’s clearly not what we’re talking about here.

This picture is really nice.

We’re talking about like a real image.

So if you wanted an actual artist to paint a portrait of you, it’s about seven hundred and fifty to two thousand dollars.

It’s just not something people are going to be running out and getting done.

I mean, if you have money, yes, but you’re not going to have a ton of people that are able to turn over this kind of money.

But as a cultural frame of reference at the time, because like I said, we can argue about the amount and the dollars, it’s harder to do, so I wanted to see what was it seen as.

And at the time, it was a sign of wealth and prestige.

So like if you had one of these, it was for the middle and upper classes.

That’s the whole point of my story here is like this is not going to have a ton of them, which is what we’re trying to get to.

As for the cost of the camera and the picture-making process, we actually know exactly what the camera cost.

Interestingly, what is presumably the first one bought in the United States was purchased on April 15th, 1840, by a dentist in Boston.

And the reason we know that is because his family kept the receipt.

So apparently that receipt’s still floating around.

He got the legit Giroux licensed daguerreotype.

He got the camera, you get twelve plates, and it included one dollar of shipping and it cost seventy-six dollars.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: So in 1840, seventy-six dollar money today, I looked it up, two thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven dollars.

Speaker 2: Holy moly.

Speaker 1: So again, this is just not for everybody.

Also, this is not getting you a permanent supply of chemicals and plates and it’s not teaching you how to use the camera.

It doesn’t come with a YouTube video.

You know what I mean? This is not some kind of easy thing you just jump into and start doing.

So it’s definitely not for everybody, no matter how you look at it.

Now, one guy this was definitely not for was a French writer named Balzac.

He believed every time you had a photo taken, you lost a layer of skin and a piece of your essence.

Speaker 2: I think I’ve heard this before.

Speaker 1: I just threw this in here because it was so silly.

But I mean, this was a little bit of a thing at the time, but it wasn’t too widespread.

But like I said, just including it because it’s kind of funny.

But remember, that’s the time frame.

Now, you can question people’s logic in this time frame as well, but I’m just saying back in that time period, you have these guys talking about losing your essence from a photograph while these other guys are like, “I’m going to just capture light.” And I think that paradox is kind of interesting.

So and just one last thing, a word on printing.

Ironically, we’ve lost our ability to print these.

So in a sense, that’s a step back.

But remember, they’re exposed in silver-coated copper.

So what you get is what you get.

It doesn’t have a built-in process to print these.

So you could daguerreotype them, like you’re just taking another picture, or you could use lithography or engraving processes for copying, but there’s no built-in process to make copies.

You’re not going to get the one-hour photo mat here.

You know what I mean? This isn’t going to be that type of thing.

So step back.

What is the lasting cultural relevance of the daguerreotype? Primarily, I think it’s the fact that as of 1840s, you have actual photos of people and places that exist today.

I mean, it’s not lost on the people of the time, you know, considering the popularity of the product, you know, the traveling shows and the galleries popping up.

I mean, this is the first time.

This is the starting point.

Like from here on, we’re saving history, right? That’s what happens here with these daguerreotypes.

So whereas the heliotype was printable and permanent, long exposure times, poor clarity, not easy, relatively cheap considering your options, but you know, it’s dangerous, it’s not easy.

How do we get this on track? Well, there are some improvements to the daguerreotype method, of course.

Like they make them collapsible, they make portable, there’s improved lenses, all this other stuff.

But large-scale improvements to the world of photography are on their way, don’t worry.

So next up, we have our calotype.

Speaker 2: I haven’t heard of that.

Speaker 1: You’ve never heard of a calotype?

Speaker 2: I don’t believe so.

Speaker 1: Well, right off the bat, let me point out the calotype does not really result in a great finished product.

That’s probably why you never heard of it.

That’s not really its relevance.

The real reason the calotype is relevant is because it creates negative photography.

So where the daguerreotype was using the plate on the camera’s back wall as your actual print, the calotype is going to use the coated paper that you can then print copies off of.

Speaker 2: Oh, okay.

Speaker 1: Right.

So that’s why it’s a huge step in the process.

Speaker 2: Gotcha.

It’s the predecessor to the film.

Speaker 1: Yeah, because moving forward, this is what photography will be in most cases.

And it brings back that perk of the heliograph that you can print them off.

So that’s another huge part.

So let’s start with the man behind the calotype, William Henry Talbot.

He comes to the process of photography by way of the camera obscura.

Speaker 2: But he’s not French.

Speaker 1: No, he is actually not French.

We are finished with French inventors as far as this one goes.

But he actually used his camera obscura to trace images and really just wanted a way to capture images directly.

Just purely, “I want this to be a thing and I’m going to figure it out.”

Speaker 2: Always love those kind of stories where the guy’s going to just literally make this happen.

Speaker 1: Unfortunately for him, he was trained as a scientist at the University of Cambridge.

And in the 1830s, he invents what he comes to call the calotype.

Interestingly, he actually didn’t think he invented anything by the time he had published his process because he thought Daguerre had beat him to it.

But in reality, he had made a completely different process.

So what is that process? Well, basically it allows the user to create copies off of a negative.

So he coats a sheet of paper in silver chloride to make it light-sensitive, and then he puts it on the back wall of his camera obscura.

When the light hits the paper, those areas become darker, basically making a reverse of the image you are capturing.

And he calls this a negative, a name that obviously sticks.

Then he fixes the image with another chemical, again just stopping the exposure, stopping that change that’s occurring with the light being captured so it stays the way it is when you took your picture.

But the beauty of the process is that you can then contact print that image onto another piece of sensitized paper, which just means you take the fixed image, put on the new sensitized sheet, set it out in the sun and wait for the new sheet to get exposed.

And this only took between an hour depending on how clear a day it is.

Basically, in the early going here, a lot of the exposure times are based on how bright it is outside because that’s your light source.

So the new sheet or your print is now reversed back to the way your image was when you looked at it the first time.

So now it’s like back to the right way.

And you can do this pretty much as many times as you want until that original eventually gets ruined.

But it’s a pretty effective process.

Speaker 2: So I just want to make sure that I’m understanding this.

Is the negative paper or is the print made out of paper?

Speaker 1: They are both made out of paper.

Speaker 2: Oh.

So how does he get the light to go through the paper then?

Speaker 1: For the negative? Okay, yeah, so he actually wets it to make it translucent.

And I guess maybe this is a good spot to discuss negatives for a second.

Again, not trying to go too far into the details here, but I guess it would help for some clarification moving forward.

So like I said, it’s light-sensitive, your negative is light-sensitive, and it records the image but backwards, reversed, darkest light, lightest dark, however you want to say that.

So basically to make your print, you want to shine light through your negative down to your print, which was treated with light-sensitive material to record the image again, but now it’s reversed back to what you were seeing when you took your picture, right?

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: So ideally, this negative material would be clear to facilitate that.

Now, the calotype isn’t there yet, okay? So he—what he did was he used just a really thin sheet of paper for his negative, and then he had a process where he wet it and that would make it translucent so he could then put it on his print paper and let the light shine through down to the print.

Speaker 2: Well, isn’t that clever?

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

Now, like I said, he used contact printing, so basically the negative would be right on top of the print, that’s why it’s called contact printing.

So the print’s always going to be the same size as the negative because he’s just laying it right on top.

And you know, we’ll see in the future when we get to glass and film, you can separate the negative and the print, so the negative can actually be smaller.

If you think about film today, obviously it’s smaller than the image you were printing off.

But you can actually enlarge that then.

It’s kind of like making shadow puppets on a wall.

You know, like if the wall, or in this case your print, is farther away, the image is going to get bigger.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: So by adjusting the distance between the two, you can adjust the size.

And obviously glass and film in the future will be clear, so it facilitates the process of light passing through the negative to the print, which gives you some more options, right?

This is also why any imperfection on your negative, like a streak in your material or dirt or whatever it is, is going to end up in your print.

So that’s why you have to be careful with that stuff moving forward.

So does that sound right? Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I got it.

Speaker 1: Okay, perfect, because that’s about the best I understand it, so that’s what we’re going to go with, okay? And honestly, with that, you pretty much have the process we’re going to try to be improving on for the next hundred years.

Speaker 2: Well, that sounds exactly like what I did in college, you know, in Photography 101.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is it.

This is Photography 101.

I mean, that is what we’re going to be doing.

So there’s going to be all kinds of process changes and trying to make things better and easier and cheaper and faster, and that’s why that’s the story I’m telling because that’s really the part that changes and that’s the part that’s interesting.

Because in short, this is it.

You know, you take your picture, you open up the camera, you expose your negative on the back, and then you print it off and it goes back to the right way.

Speaker 1: So, what about this process? How does this product come out, you know, the accuracy, the speed, and all the things we looked at at the other cameras? Well, the speed here is awesome.

I mean, he gets original exposure time down to a minute.

So, that’s a big deal, right? And we said like the daguerreotype got down to that eventually too, but you know, he’s right there in that same ballpark.

Now, again, smiling not really going to be a thing, but he has based on what I have found at least matched that exposure time.

So why isn’t the world going to take calotypes for the next hundred years?

The problem is accuracy, clarity, image quality, mmm, not so much.

Okay, so this is a step back, which is why the world goes in another direction.

There’s much less tonal range, okay? So the pictures are pretty, I mean they’re a little blurry.

Speaker 2: Oh I see, yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when you look at the picture here, we have one of looks like a column was under construction, and you know, in front of I don’t know, is that a church in the background there? But basically, you know, it’s kind of it kind of looks brownish, it’s, you know, you see the fibers from the exposed paper in your image.

So they would wax them to try to limit this, but it’s really not great.

The image would start to dull and then again so they would wax it or cover it in glass and stuff like that.

So it’s it’s just not going to be something that turns out to be the thing that everybody uses moving forward.

So, does it gain any popularity at the time? There’s a bit of an appeal to photographers.

You know, the process is improved over time and it becomes a little popular for portraits and landscapes and stuff like that.

For instance, you could take pictures of a group of people at a special event, there’s a couple that they showed, you know, like there’s like some kind of science convention or something like that.

Because you know, you’re only sitting for a minute.

So, you know, this is, you know, this is helpful for that.

Also, you could apparently manipulate the image with chemicals in cool ways, so it became a little of like an artistic thing.

Where people were like taking pictures of landmarks and then, you know, making these creative processes and making them look different, stuff like that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you could probably do like a double exposure type thing too.

Speaker 1: Yeah, because you are re-exposing it, you’re doing it, there’s, you know, so it becomes a little bit of a, you know, an art fad.

And in fact, the process ends up being used through the 1850s.

So it’s not, you know, it’s not a flash in the pan.

It’s it’s used for a little while.

Another cool thing is it could be used for making copies of other documents.

Which, you know, to be fair is what he was trying to do.

So, you know, like that’s actually what he set out to do.

So that’s kind of amazing, right?

The cost was actually an issue.

Ironically, he successfully patented the process and then killed it because he had the patent.

So he was charging like licensing fees and really that’s part of the reason nobody hopped on so you don’t get these improvements.

There’s not everybody, like I said, it’s always like pieces of the puzzle, like you know, he did this and he did this, well he stops the puzzle.

You know what I mean? Because he’s not letting anybody else use it, so.

Speaker 2: Gotcha.

Speaker 1: Now as far as safe, you’re still using chemicals, but you’re not using mercury.

Now he actually used gallic acid, so as far as I can tell that’s not nearly as dangerous to most people.

So, you know, it’s relatively cheap and stuff.

But in terms of what we’re looking for, we’re definitely not there.

And and even at the time, it never catches on the way future methods will or even as much as the daguerreotype did.

So, you know, definitely never going to become the product for everyone.

But it’s still, you know, a really relevant product on our journey to modern photography.

It moves from images on plates to negative photography.

He reduced exposure times.

Also really interesting, he created the first photo lab.

So he used his process to make copies of images, one for he was making a book, you know, so he made a bunch of, you know, images for his book so he could run off copies.

But he also did it for customers.

So basically he had all the chemicals and he would just set his negatives on paper to print them out in the sun.

I mean, he was able to take a picture and reproduce it effectively and, you know, it’s just a really cool sign of things to come.

Like he basically like I said, he made a photo lab.

He could just run off copies.

Speaker 2: Well, he made the negative and that’s really…

Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, and of course, you know, he’s also making his images on paper which, you know, it’s it’s almost as prized as the daguerreotype as a concept.

Even though like the images are much worse, you know, like the fact that we’re moving to paper is a big deal.

Obviously we’re not going to be printing off tins in the thousands of making pictures and copies and stuff like that moving into the future if we’re going to get to a world where everybody’s taking pictures, so.

So, that’s where we’re at now.

We have one process that makes good images, your daguerreotype.

And a process that can make copies, your calotype.

But we’re going to need both.

So what how do we put this together? What’s our next big stop? It’s going to be wet plate photography.

And this is a big one.

This is like Grand Central Station.

This is a big stop on the journey.

Speaker 2: This is where everything comes together.

Speaker 1: Eh.

Speaker 2: Eh.

Speaker 1: Not quite.

Speaker 2: This is where everything almost comes together.

Speaker 1: This is where some things come together.

We’ll give you that.

Some things come together and other ones are an enormous problem.

So we’re we’re almost where everything comes together.

Wet plate is not quite it.

Speaker 2: Ah.

Speaker 1: But this is going to be the face of photography for decades.

It is actually moving forward.

We’re going to talk about other types in you know like when we get to dry plates and film and all that stuff.

There’s still going to be people doing this.

This isn’t some kind of like like I said the other one’s not a flash in pan, this is an actual movement.

People really like this.

So.

So let’s dig in.

Wet plate photography also known as wet collodion photography.

To see how it gets going and how it works and how it compares to other processes, let’s start with the wet plate itself.

Because this is a huge change and it’s going to give us a great picture quality.

First off, we’re sticking with the negatives.

Like I said moving forward we’re working with negative photography.

So you capture an image on the material that’s reversed and then it gets printed off on another medium.

Speaker 2: Got it.

Speaker 1: The right way.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: And the huge improvement with the wet plate or wet collodion process is the actual light sensitive plate.

So how does it get made and how does it work? Well in 1851, Frederick Scott Archer joins our story.

I don’t know why everybody goes by three names back then.

I I really…

Speaker 2: Not to be confused with Frederick Archer.

Speaker 1: I yeah, it’s like I started writing them down.

I was like why am I writing this middle name down? I don’t understand like it’s Frederick Archer.

You know so sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t but everybody had three names.

I don’t…

Speaker 2: We’ll just call him Freddy.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So Freddy was actually a sculptor.

He was using calotypes to take pictures to make his sculptures from.

Speaker 2: Oh.

Speaker 1: Right, yeah, it’s a neat process.

It’s kind of like the you know using the camera obscura to draw your diagram to make your painting.

This guy’s like taking a calotype to then be able to make his sculpture out of.

Speaker 2: Well some sculptors are not so good at drawing, you know, so like it makes it even his thing, so why yeah.

Speaker 1: But he invented a technique for making glass plate negatives called the wet collodion process.

For people who want the deep details on this, this was actually an improvement on an invention by Abel Niépce who was the cousin of the original Niépce from five years earlier.

But they’re very similar and Archer’s is the one that’s successful so we’re just kind of jumping to that and skipping over the other part.

So basically Archer came up with the idea of pouring collodion on a glass plate before dipping it into silver nitrate to make his photographic plate that he’ll put in his camera on the back wall to put his picture on.

So that’s his obviously we’re all familiar with film and stuff like that and we’re not anywhere near that yet but so to speak that’s his film of his camera, right? That’s what these plates are.

You put them in the back, the light comes in, gets exposed in the silver and then you have your plate as your negative to make your pictures with.

Now just a quick chemistry alert here, you know if you’re not super into the chemistry, but this is what happens.

The collodion was raw cotton, ether, alcohol, iodide, and bromide.

The silver nitrate binded to this making the solution light sensitive and then they put that on their glass.

Just as important, they would also dry to form a clear film that would then protect your image when you go to clean it off and print it.

So this mix is the key basically to your to your negative.

You can now expose the plate and then fix your image and then make your prints.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: So what about the prints? Because this is a big part of our story.

Obviously, you know, when photography takes off, a big part of it is being able to print them off.

Well in the beginning they were using Talbot’s old process.

He actually used salt and paper for his print material to to re-expose the image onto.

But by the mid 1850s another man, I’m not really going to go for his full name, he’s got more names, he’s got four names.

But we’re going to call him Louis-Edouard and I was wrong, I think we got a French guy back in here.

I forgot about Louis.

He comes up with the idea of using albumen paper for the print material.

This is also kind of taken from Niépce’s cousin because that was part of his process.

But basically the paper he’s using to print his image, it’s coated in albumen which is just egg whites and salt treated with silver nitrate.

So again the silver nitrate’s what makes it sensitive.

The egg whites actually gave it a glossy shine.

This is actually improved to the point that you can buy pre-treated paper.

So that’s like another awesome thing.

You know what I mean? It’s all about like because in the beginning you just you literally had to do everything by yourself.

Like you just had to make everything happen.

And that’s one of the things people are working on is like how can we make this so you don’t have to actually make every little piece of this when you’re taking a picture.

And this gives you your nice pictures that you can develop with your fancy new collodion negative.

So how does this compare to the other processes? Well the picture quality rivals that of the daguerreotype which is obviously the gold standard at this point.

So you know that’s a good a good starting point.

Speaker 2: Right, those were the crisp and very detailed images.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

And the only reason we moved away from that is because it was on metal sheets and you couldn’t make copies.

It’s just the whole thing was impractical, right? I mean imagine if we were using metal today, it would be a billion dollars for you know just to print off photos.

So we are definitely moving in the right direction here.

We got our quality back.

Well what about the speed? This actually gets down to 5 to 20 seconds.

Speaker 2: That’s pretty fast, yeah.

Speaker 1: To five minutes.

Now that’s awesome.

But like I said the light conditions are we’re still using natural lighting.

Speaker 2: Well they haven’t come up with the the flash guy holding the light bulb thing.

Speaker 1: Right.

So the thing is you’re basically working with natural light so you’re going to have to you’re kind of beholden to that.

So under perfect conditions though five seconds, you can smile for five seconds, right?

Speaker 2: If it’s cloudy, five minutes.

Speaker 1: Then you’re in trouble.

But otherwise you know we’re kind of cooking here.

You know this is something you can work with.

This actually because if you think about it this opens up what you can take a picture of.

It’s not just about smiling which is awesome.

But even if you’re just trying to take pictures of outside and it’s a little windy, you know.

Speaker 2: Right, like a cityscape with like…

Speaker 1: Like a tree’s going to move.

We don’t think about these things when you put yourself back then.

I mean…

Speaker 2: A picture of a carriage going by.

Speaker 1: Right.

That’s why this goal like I said everything is driving toward trying to make it so everybody can use it and make it easier and make it faster because it’s it’s really just not going to be ever hit that world of popularity.

You know what I mean? You’re not building Instagram off of you know five second exposures.

Like we’re not you’re not ever going to get to that world which is what I think you know this is like I said these are the steps on how we get to there.

This is what changes our lives.

Now as far as expense, it’s kind of cheap.

This actually opens up a commercial enterprise.

Okay, so traveling photographers and their studios take pictures for you, okay? There’s celebrities get their picture taken and then you can buy these celebrity pictures.

They’re like these little pictures.

I honestly feel like they’re the genesis of trading cards like baseball cards and stuff.

Basically it’s like hey this celebrity you know and you have this little picture of it.

It’s kind of like a football card.

But I didn’t dig too deep into that part of it but it appears to have become this like small cottage industry that like celebrities started doing to like boost their profile.

And it became so successful that they actually made money off of it in the end.

Like they started charging to let you use their image to sell these little pictures.

So this is like getting part of modern everyday culture now.

As far as the process, it’s cost effective in the sense that you can make a business off of it, right? Like it there’s a difference between what we’re trying to get to where like you can just take pictures and it’s all cheap and good for everybody and like this is at least economically viable, right? Like you if you go into this for a living you can make enough money off of it that you can make a living.

Like that’s what people do.

Speaker 2: You can become a professional photographer.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So like it as like I said it’s not necessarily cheap you know in in the broader sense but it’s it’s effectively cheap in the sense that you know it’s it’s low enough that you can make a commercial business.

Speaker 2: Well and you’re trying to do something that in a town that no one else is doing it so that’s one thing that’s like you know what I’m going to save my money and buy a camera and try open a studio.

Speaker 1: Right.

With the quality when you put it all together it’s it’s you know it’s kind of affordable.

As far as easy, we’re not even close.

Like this is a big no, okay? So let’s remember when I said it’s called wet collodion or wet plate photography, the the reason it’s called that is because it’s wet.

The wet part is not water, it’s chemicals.

So how does this work? It’s not great.

Okay, basically you need a bunch of chemicals when you take your negative to prepare your negative.

Not only that, you have to have a bunch of other ones to make your picture right away which is just the whole thing is a pain.

Speaker 2: And you have to do this in the dark I assume like or somewhat of a dark…

Speaker 1: I’m going to explain this process.

It’s absurd.

Okay, if yes it’s in the dark, everything’s in the dark so I don’t forget to mention that.

But well your plate has to stay in the dark so that’s part of it but um you have to do all these things and you have to do it right away.

This is not like I go take my picture, I go back home and no.

Speaker 2: And you can’t have like well we’ll take three of these plates with take a wet plate and then I gotta go do this right away.

Speaker 1: This has to happen on site immediately.

So you actually had to sensitize the plate right before you used it or it’s going to lose its sensitization.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: Then you had to process it right after that.

One source says you had 10 minutes.

So you have to make your plate, capture image, print off your picture in 10 minutes or you’re not going to get picture out of it.

Speaker 2: Oh so you’re very limited with how many copies you can make then.

Speaker 1: All while all while that’s right it’s wet.

Okay, this is not you know what I mean? It’s not it it’s a huge pain.

Okay and adding to this because it was wet there’s limited tolerances for heat and light because you’re working with these like liquids.

So on top of it you gotta worry about the environment.

I mean…

Speaker 2: So if you’re in Arizona you only get five minutes.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

I mean that’s it’s the thing.

It’s like you have to be aware of what’s going on around you at the same time.

I mean eventually people sold kits that kind of like gave you everything you needed in one place so at least you know what I mean like you could just be like I bought my kit.

But let’s see what you actually had to do to pull this off.

Now PBS, one of our favorite sources, actually provides a great description of the process which I’m going to paraphrase here because it’s super super long and complicated and leave out some of the details.

But you tell me if you think this sounds like fun.

So this is just you don’t have to memorize this but basically just what’s going on.

Okay, so first your camera’s this huge box.

It’s on wheels because it weighs a ton.

It’s got a plate holder on the back that you can remove from the box, okay? There’s a guy with his arm in the picture.

The thing looks like it’s probably all together about two and a half three feet long.

It’s actually collapsible in the middle.

Speaker 2: I was going to say it looks like it has a like accordion…

Speaker 1: That was an improvement that came later because originally they weren’t like that.

But if you think about it you don’t actually need the space in between to be there unless you’re taking your picture.

So this was to make it smaller to put it in storage because you just like close it together like an accordion and then pull it back apart when you’re ready to take your picture, right?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Now this looks like it’s maybe the size of a microwave like a standard size microwave that you hang over your you know your stove like those like two foot ones it’s kind of like that.

Except the end of it just comes off because that’s where you put your box in so that’s where you put your plate in.

So it’s basically roughly you know those dimensions.

Like I said I don’t have specific dimensions because they’re changing over time they are making them better and stuff like that.

But basically here’s your process.

You coat a piece of glass in chemicals that gives it the light sensitive coating.

You then hide the coated glass in a case so it doesn’t start to expose to the light.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: You then take it out to your camera and insert it.

Then you take the case off that you put on the plate to keep it from getting light leaving the glass in the camera which is also obviously sealed.

It will actually be dripping wet at this point, okay? So when you put that liquid on there you had to pour it on a plate.

It’s like just imagine like you’re on go out to a table and you take a bottle of wine and pour it on top of it.

Now it’s dripping wet.

You remove your lens cover off the camera, let the light in for 20 seconds to five minutes.

Speaker 2: Depending on the lighting outside.

Speaker 1: Gotta know how all that works.

You gotta be on your game.

Like if this is your first time you’re in trouble.

Speaker 2: The light meter is…

Speaker 1: Then basically do all that backward.

Because now you have to get all this back into your darkroom which if you’re in the field by darkroom we mean dark tent that you brought with you on your wagon.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Because you need it to be dark.

You can see why those old-timey photos like we said earlier had those big blankets over the top because like everything’s just got to be sealed off.

Okay and you’re still not done.

After you get your image and your plate back to your tent you gotta put more chemicals on it to fix your image.

Remember you always gotta fix your image otherwise the material if it gets light again it’s just going to…

Speaker 2: It’ll get exposed again.

Speaker 1: It’s just going to expose more and then you’re not going to have a picture.

Then you clean it all off.

Then you take your albumen soaked paper…

Speaker 2: Which also has to be in the dark.

Speaker 1: Yes this is all now you’re in your tent which you just soaked in by the way you’re the one soaking in silver nitrate.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Throw it on the negative and let it sit in the sun.

Okay.

Then you have to tone it and fix the image again because same situation.

And after you do all that you just hang it up on your wall you’re good you’re done that’s it.

Speaker 2: Just like that.

Speaker 1: So you can see not a lot of people doing this, right? Like this is not this is not a hobby.

So like I said this is why we are not…

Speaker 2: It’s a lot of chemicals.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

This is why we are not everything all in one process.

Speaker 2: Without gloves I assume.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So it’s like we’re you know I just one more little thing.

If you get any dirt in your picture this entire time you said you’re pouring liquid onto this glass plate.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: If you get any dirt in it that’s going to be in your picture.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: So just like you know what I mean? There’s a lot there’s actually more technicalities to it.

Speaker 2: You got a hair anywhere in the process on it it’s done.

Speaker 1: Just anything yeah.

You can’t it’s you’re just I mean you still take your picture yeah you can still get your picture.

Speaker 2: Someone will still buy it.

Speaker 1: But they’re not going to give you the same probably not pay the same amount.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Um and there is actually I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at Khan Academy it’s like this really cool free website this guy made basically for like cheap education for people.

And they actually have a section on this and they have a guy showing the whole process so you can look that up you can watch a video of a guy actually doing this.

All the crap you have to do to make this picture.

And like I said it it just it’s 10 minutes.

It feels like you’re it feels like you’re like building the motor of a car you know what I mean? Like it’s like these like detailed steps and then this goes there you know but you have like 10 minutes.

Speaker 1: And just a little capper here on the safety part, did I mention that the collodion is highly flammable?

Speaker 2: No, you did not.

Speaker 1: And toxic.

Speaker 2: But that makes sense given the ingredients.

Speaker 1: And it stinks to high heaven.

Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: So yeah, so it’s basically like hurry up and go slow.

I don’t know how you’re supposed to do it, it’s crazy.

You’re supposed to be taking a picture, it sounds like you’re, you know what I mean, this is like a science experiment.

Speaker 2: And then if someone wants three copies, you gotta do all that in that time, yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole thing is crazy.

So, is this for everybody and popular? Like I said, on the upside, there are some upsides, okay? People like it because of the quality, you know, the end product.

It’s actually free from patent issues, so unlike our previous process where, you know, it blocked everybody out of it, this is actually free.

So everybody just jumps into it because they don’t have to worry about licensing this and, you know what I mean, you can just jump into it.

And that’s why it’s almost universally adopted.

Also, the process could be used to make other types of artistic images like some we’ve seen in the past, ambrotypes and tintypes, if you’ve seen those, they’re like these like different types of images people make out of, out of this process.

So people like that.

The camera itself, it takes off relatively speaking, you know, to anything else so far, despite the, the difficulties.

Like we’re talking about like actually buying a camera and going into this, you know, like I said, they’re, they’re enormous.

Remember the old-timey photo thing, you know, and if you’re trying to make a business, you need a wagon.

It’s popular again, like I said, in the sense that you can make a business out of it.

It’s not popular in the sense you’re going to buy one and have it at your house and take pictures of birthday parties.

Speaker 2: Right, so that’s, I think that’s a good way of putting it, yeah.

Speaker 1: So we’ll just leave it with that.

But the pictures themselves, totally different story.

You know what I mean? And this is the key to this.

I mean, this is where photography starts to grow into like a truly global thing, okay? Like the spread of photographs, it’s, it’s a beloved viable commercial product and keepsake.

This is, this is a whole different area now.

This is the huge change with this process.

Now, people actually found the shine, the nature of the albumen prints to be a bit much.

Some people didn’t like that, like I said, the egg whites, or the, the egg gloss, like so that’s like some people still kind of like some of the older versions.

But other than that, everybody loves them.

That’s the only one little caveat that some people didn’t like at the time.

I think that’s like anything else.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: You know what I mean? I’m sure there’s people who watch 4K TV and they’re like, oh my god, it’s too clear.

There’s always like an adjustment period, so.

But apparently, there was one source that said in 1863, tens of millions of eggs were used in Germany alone for making this paper.

This is a big deal, right? So now you’re going to have millions of people buying these pictures.

And you remember those pictures I said about the celebrities, as far as cost, they were tens of thousands of these sold, and they were between 25 cents and 50 cents a piece.

You know, you can actually afford to buy something like that.

Now, that’s not you, it’s, you know, it’s not a picture of yourself, but beyond that, beyond like it being popular, there’s actually huge cultural significance here.

This actually spawns photojournalism.

The Crimean War was actually photographed by Roger Fenton.

He’s considered the first photojournalist and he used this process.

So this is, you know, this is like modern society here getting a new tool in its toolkit.

Matthew Brady famously photographed Lincoln in the Civil War.

After the Civil War, land surveys of the West were ordered by the US government for the first time because they could come back with these images.

Actually, Yellowstone came to be because of this.

William Jackson went to Yellowstone and explained, you know, all the, all the beautiful things out there and the geysers and the mountains and the landscapes, but it was when he saw the photos that Grant, as president at the time, signed a bill creating Yellowstone National Park in 1872.

Speaker 2: Oh wow.

Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can imagine it, right? Like I can come back and tell you, like we did it, you know, we went to Yellowstone.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you can bring me back a drawing of it or something, but it’s not the same.

Speaker 1: Yeah, like I could, you can tell people about it.

I honestly, Yellowstone of all the things, I, even the pictures don’t do it justice, but that’s counter to what I’m trying to say here.

So, but in reality, if you go out there and you come back and try to tell someone what Yellowstone’s like, you can do it, but when you see photos of this thing and like especially like when you’ve never seen photos of anything, you’re like what is this? That makes a national park.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Now, to be fair, daguerreotypes, they had their, their part in this cultural change as well.

Like even Brady himself used daguerreotypes.

But what we’re talking about here is how culture changes, that’s the point of the show, so and this is just a little bit more where it changes.

So I mean, include that in the daguerreotype as well.

But for now, where we’re at, we are forever going to have documentation of the past.

I mean, just step back and look at it, you know, not the technicalities of like, you know, like making pictures and all that stuff.

The world, how does it change? You have actual visual representation of the past.

Speaker 2: Right.

Well, those pictures, there’s haunting, haunting pictures of the Civil War.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And that’s like, that’s…

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s not all good.

Speaker 2: Yeah, no.

Speaker 1: It’s not all good, but you can take…

Speaker 2: But you need pictures of the good and the bad.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s just, I mean, how much bigger of a change can this be? It’s like this gargantuan change in the world.

Like I don’t think you can overstate the difference between reading about the past and seeing it.

Like I don’t, how can you? Like I don’t, you can’t ever go back to genuinely accepting things as true by written word again, can you? Like you know what I mean? Like you can believe things, you can read them, you can go, but when somebody comes up and goes, no, here’s a picture of what happened, it’s like boom, like what, like it’s part of your brain.

You know, that’s why they say a picture’s worth a thousand words, right? I mean, no truer words have ever been said.

And like as I was prepping for this show, I just sat and thought about how many ways this impacts us and what a change it is.

And I actually just thought, I was like newspapers, man.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Like what about newspapers? And like it popped into my head, so I looked it up and it was like what was the first picture in a newspaper? And there’s like a whole thing about it, there’s a Historical Society of New England, and they have this like whole article and they go through and explain everything and it says the first actual photograph to accompany a news story appeared in July 1848.

That photo was printed in a French weekly periodical, L’Illustration, or however you’d say that in French.

It depicted barricaded Parisian streets caused by a workers’ strike.

The 1848 June Days uprising occurred from June 22nd to the 26th.

It’s a workers’ strike.

You think about the far-reaching effects of that.

You’re like, oh my god, that’s right, these guys are over here doing a strike, you know, that’s passing like cultural concepts and notions.

Speaker 2: Well, and it’s also interesting about the, so the French weekly periodical was named L’Illustration, right?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Which means that before this picture was printed, they were just doing drawings.

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, oh yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Speaker 2: Like so that’s like amazing that like it just basically changed the landscape of just this periodical alone and what they were putting out weekly.

Speaker 1: Yeah, they, I believe it said in the article they actually did the first drawing in a newspaper too, they did, I forget exactly what it was, I was…

Speaker 2: Well, if that’s the name of your periodical, you’re expected to have some sort of, you know, picture in it, right?

Speaker 1: They had pictures with their stories, exactly.

So it makes sense that they jumped on that.

Speaker 2: Right.

So, but then it also completely changes, you know, you now you have to have a mix of the two, right? You can’t just go to having just drawings or just pictures.

Speaker 1: No, you gotta have photos, yeah.

And they actually go on, they have some other, this wasn’t about the first one, but they had some other articles which the, one of them kind of blew me away was Roger Fenton, who we mentioned, he had a picture, the pictures have names, I don’t, I don’t know if the artist did that or if that’s just how they’re remembered in history, but it says Mortar Batteries in Front of Picket House, Light Division, 1855.

And like we said, Roger Fenton had spent three and a half months in Crimea creating 360 wet plate images before he left in 1855.

And if you look at this picture, basically it’s, it’s stunning.

It’s soldiers in what appear to be completely flat area behind like a six-foot high defensive structure next to huge mortars, cannons basically.

The mortars are larger than they are, and they have these like bowling ball-sized shells lined up next to them.

I mean this must have been a mind-blowing, like if you’ve never been in a war, you gotta remember this, I keep, like these aren’t people that like grew up watching movies of like Saving Private Ryan, right?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Like not everybody in the world was in a war in their life, like and I just think when you see this type of thing you’re just like wow, what is going on here? And they go on to end this article with a nice way to cap it off, which you know kind of shared my sentiment, but it said with the improvements in technology and more widespread use of cameras, illustrations based on photographs began to appear more regularly in newspapers after the Civil War.

By 1900, images were expected rather than cherished.

Today news does not exist without accompanying images.

And I think that puts it as succinctly as possible, right? Like it just changes everything it touches.

So where are we in the world of photography? In 1860, the daguerreotype is basically gone and the collodion process would reign until the 1880s.

It’s like the child product of the calotype and daguerreotype.

You know, paper prints could be easily made, quality is good.

We get the added benefit of the exposure, sometimes down to five seconds.

I mean at that point you’re able to capture almost everything, right? That’s why we’re getting all these news stories and we’re getting, you know, you’re basically able to capture almost everything except something that’s literally like just flying past you and moving too fast, right?

The effects of photography, they’re now spreading around the world.

Unfortunately, you know, there are areas to improve on.

We’re not going to make it to a world of picture-taking as I put it, as opposed to just professional photography that’s available to everybody if it’s just this dangerous with the chemicals, all the learning you have to do, all the skill, the messes.

Like anything, there were of course various improvements with the wet plate process, but it still had to be used within minutes of prepping your plate while it was still light-sensitive, which means you had to coat the plate in a darkroom tent, run out, use it, run back, run back to the tent, fix it, you know, get to drag all this stuff around including volatile liquids.

Speaker 2: Right.

That poor guy during the war.

Speaker 1: Yeah, like hundreds of pounds.

You know what I mean?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So we have good images though, you know, on the upside you have good images, you have the printing abilities, the photograph launching as a global product, right? People are finding out about photography and they’re loving the idea of having pictures.

If you just didn’t have to ride around the back of a caravan with a camera to make this happen with a bunch of chemicals that you’re worried about blowing you up or giving you cancer if you knew what cancer was, that would be a little bit helpful.

Speaker 2: And also what if you do all this work, like how many people failed, you know, and how many pictures weren’t actually developed because they failed, like how many awesome images, you know.

Speaker 1: Right.

Exactly.

It’s pretty…

So how do you progress towards a world of picture-taking from this point? And for that, I give you the dry plate.

That’s right, it’s dry.

Speaker 2: Yes.

We like dry.

Speaker 1: Yes, as opposed to wet, it’s dry.

Speaker 2: We can do it in Arizona.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

I mean this is a huge turning point.

This is like, this is like when you said everything coming together, this is everything coming together as far as the process, as far as the process.

And before we dive in, I just want to point out here, the dry plate, it, it’s more about what you don’t have to do anymore than what it is about what you get.

I mean the finished product is, is comparable to wet plates.

It doesn’t, you know what I mean, it gets a little bit better in the future, but it’s almost like wet plates would have too, you know what I mean?

But let’s talk about what’s truly great about dry plates.

They’re not wet.

Everyone was aware of the issue with wet plates, so there’s a lot of people trying to come up with an alternative, like make up a way that isn’t so messy, right? This has been going on for a while.

Doesn’t expose the user to chemicals, doesn’t need to be prepped and developed right away.

So let’s look at the successful product.

In 1871, an English physician named Richard Leach Maddox enters our story.

Speaker 2: There’s your three names again.

Speaker 1: It’s always three names.

I don’t really know what it is.

I don’t, I don’t, is there, did we stop doing it? Did they just start back then? Like it wasn’t like, you know, Napoleon Edward Bonaparte, you know what I mean? Like I don’t know what, anyway.

His entry into this story, Mr.

Maddox, comes from a background working with microscopes and he had cause to make some photomicrographs for a paper he was writing.

Photomicrographs.

I love that.

Photomicrograph.

Speaker 2: And what is it?

Speaker 1: Photomicrograph.

Um, basically it’s a picture you take with a microscope, but it sounds like, you know, the greatest thing that’s ever happened.

So he was using the wet collodion process to do this, and he was also like a smart person, he was like I’m not doing this anymore, this is crazy, I’m going to die from this.

Speaker 2: Well, he’s a, he’s a physician, so he’s like what am I doing here?

Speaker 1: I mean it’s 1871 physician, but still, sounds like he was, you know, he was with it, he was, he was with his time.

Speaker 2: Like it’s burning my nostrils, this can’t be good.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it, yeah exactly, anybody could tell that.

Your dog could tell you that.

Speaker 2: Why do I have a headache after every time I take a picture?

Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like every time I make a roll of pictures I wake up and it’s three days later.

Speaker 2: And I have a nosebleed.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So he had to find a better way.

Uh, and it is Richard who is credited with coming up with the solution and taking all the hard work out of it.

Coming up with the answer is simple, okay? So like obviously I’m not saying he didn’t work hard, I wouldn’t have come up with it.

But basically all he did was he suspended silver bromide in a gelatin emulsion, uh, which then he coated his plate, glass plate with, to replace the wet plate process.

So the making it happen part, very difficult.

What it is, not that much different.

Not only does this work, not only is it not a mess, but you can actually pre-make the plates, get them out when you’re ready to take your picture, and the cherry on top, you can develop them later.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: So this is just a different world now.

This is just a different world of photography.

Somebody else made your plate, you just show up, you put it in your camera, you take your picture, then you send it back and let them do something, you know what I mean? Now at the time nobody was doing that, they’re all making their, they’re all doing their own actually, that’s a process that comes up later.

But, you know, the point is it’s just ten times easier.

It’s not even comparable how much easier it is.

You know, there’s no, you’re not taking your, as you said, you’re not taking your wagon around with you, right? All you need is a camera, a dry plate, and a light-proof plate holder.

You’re off and running.

This is a game changer.

I mean this is totally different.

So what is the process here? The dry plates, they could be made weeks in advance.

I couldn’t get an answer how long they would stay exactly, I did look a couple times, but weeks seemed to be the answer.

Speaker 2: Weeks, that’s what we got, weeks.

Speaker 1: In the, yeah, in the future it sounds like they go a lot farther when we get into the Eastman days and stuff like that, um, but I think in the beginning that’s kind of what you’re dealing with.

You could develop your own pictures later whenever you wanted, or you could have somebody else do it, like I said.

This is where the photo mat starts, it’s not called a photo mat, but you know what I mean, like this is where the concept starts of separating the process.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: It’s a huge step to have the person taking the picture not have to be involved in the developing process.

I mean especially for our story, right? Because our story revolves around the culture, not the photography.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: It opens the process to so many more people, right? Like you don’t, you know, there you might be like hey I want to get into photography and I’m rich.

I gotta do what? You know what I mean? Like you know, it’s like never mind, I don’t, I don’t want to do this, this is stupid.

But now you’re like oh I want to get into photography and I’m rich.

Speaker 2: Or I’m an explorer and I want to do this, but wait, I gotta do what?

Speaker 1: Sounds okay, yeah, like you know what I mean, it’s like yeah, you’re like I’m pouring chemicals in the middle of the Amazon.

Yeah.

But now, now it’s just like oh, okay, I see what you’re saying here.

So people without the knowledge or interest in learning the chemistry or working with the chemicals themselves are now eligible consumers and users of the product.

So let’s look at the clarity of the product.

The pictures are great, okay? The images could be, though they weren’t always better, okay? So this is a thing that we’ll talk about in the future in the next episode.

To say that the dry plates end up being better than the wet plates, and then in the future people want to stick with the wet plates when the next thing comes out, they want to stick with the dry plates when the next thing comes out after that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: It’s always a thing and it is also justified.

It’s not just to say it’s the people who are like I don’t like this, it’s glossy like the egg white paper, you know.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: There is also issues with the products, like because they’re new, you know what I mean? So, but other than to mention it, it’s not that interesting, so I’m not going to go into it too deeply later.

But like anything, a new product comes out, it’s not great.

Speaker 2: Well, not just that, you spend all this money to do, you know, say you just spent all this money to buy the wet plate process, right, and to set up a shop.

Now I’m thousands of dollars in doing this and now this new process comes out, I’m like no, I’m sticking with this.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and you get one…

Speaker 2: I just figured it out.

Speaker 1: You get one bad dry plate and you’re like this stinks.

Yeah.

But it’s like, it’s like buying a plasma TV.

They haven’t made a plasma TV in ten years.

That’s how it works.

It came out, it was the greatest thing ever, and then you’re like why is there a hole burnt into the side of my TV or in the, you know what I mean, like when they had the, the pixels get fixed.

So it’s just, you know, there’s these transitions and then something wins and something loses and obviously we’re sticking with the winners in this because uh, that’s what uh, is in the history.

So pictures are good, could be a little bit better, could be a little bit worse, it depends what you’re talking about, you know, given circumstance.

But the emulsion was applied to the plate in a factory setting, okay? So that’s the upside, right? Like you’re not like out in the field just dumping liquid.

You’re like doing this in a factory setting.

So should be more uniform, don’t have to worry about getting your fingerprints on it.

Speaker 2: Dust is not a problem.

Speaker 1: Well, shouldn’t be a problem.

Yeah, maybe we’re talking about 1870s factories, but still, ten times better than, you know, driving your wagon around out in, you know, the middle of the Midwest.

So those are the potentials for the upside and the improvement.

Um, all the upside of the wet plate without the wet.

I mean it’s really it’s that simple, right? Now of course there are some holdouts as I said, that goes on through the process.

But let’s look at some positives beyond just being a dry plate.

The speed and exposure time is great.

These dry plates eventually improved to the point that they become the most sensitive to light of anything we’ve talked about yet.

So I mean exposure times actually go down.

Then the product becomes more popular and you get the ancillary benefits, people start making more cameras.

So like that’s, you know, you really need things to catch on for things to catch on so to speak, you know what I mean? Like if you want the things that are going to make everybody love it, you need some things that are going to make a couple people love it as opposed to the two guys in the back love it.

And that’s kind of what we got here is the best way I can put it.

So improvements to the cameras, they start becoming lighter, more compact, cheaper, which is what we’re going for, right? We’re trying to get the safe, easy, cheap and for everybody.

And you put that together with the shorter exposure time and suddenly you don’t need tripods anymore because now you can hold the camera and you don’t have to hold still forever, so it’s even easier because the exposure is lower.

Because remember, holding the smile isn’t the only thing to do with the cameras, you gotta hold it still too.

Right? Like you gotta hold that thing together and it’s like at some point like I can’t do this.

The exposure process advanced to the point that it gets so short you could actually stop action, which is just…

Speaker 1: I mean, what what more could it be? Like, you can take a picture of a moving object.

Right.

Now, there was actually a guy, this is a whole other story.

I didn’t really go down that path that did that with wet plates.

It’s kind of a famous thing, but he he basically set up this contraption where a horse ran down and tripped all these cameras so he could take a picture to see if the horse’s feet were all off the ground at the same time.

So, it was kind of like a neat little thing, but uh putting aside your you know, overachiever idea of catching action.

Uh this is like we’re saying you can catch it with a picture.

That is just I mean, that’s amazing.

Again, now we’re pretty much at the point where you can almost capture anything.

It’s still going to be some give and take with the exposure time and and your environment and all that.

But basically, we’re at the point we’re talking about buying a camera, buying a pre-made dry plate, walking outside and taking a picture of a moving object on a sunny day and printing out pictures.

In short, we’re talking about the birth of modern photography, which is where we’ve been heading this whole time.

And how amazing that must have been, right? I mean, think of all the scenes we’ve talked about, family portraits, portraits of groups, people, photojournalism, like we’re getting into the real world of photography.

Everything is made so much easier by this.

It really puts together the whole process process of photography.

So, where are we now? Let’s look where this puts us.

You guys said the whole time we’ve been moving from just basically trying to capture light in any capacity towards the world of modern photography.

Before we go on the next episode and talk about how cultural world changes into this place obsessed with just capturing picture taking.

Yeah.

With the development of dry plates, we have cemented the cultural impact of photography on society, right? Like, you’re never going back.

Like, you can’t you you’re never going to be like, we gave up on on photographs.

Like, right? You know, like, no matter how hard wet plates were, you probably weren’t probably weren’t going to, but dry plates.

Yeah, you’re just not.

Yeah.

Yeah, especially as a news uh Yeah. you know, newspaper or news reporting or anything.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Good point.

Like, this is This is part of the world.

Like, so we’re we’re this is part of the world.

Yeah.

You’re just trying to sell newspapers, so, yeah, you’re going to get a photograph that’s going to sell you newspapers.

Right.

And now, instead of things being documented, history’s record, without all the mess with the dry plates.

You know, like I said, that’s the difference.

You know, you got it with the wet plates.

Now, it’s now it’s just better.

So, for all of written history, you had to rely on people’s written impressions of events.

Now, they’re immortalized with images.

Photographs are different.

They’re the objective lens that records exactly what happens.

They freeze time.

They’re a direct link to the past we have never known to this point.

Like, that’s the world we’re living in right now.

You’ve never known this.

Now, it’s a part of your life every day.

And they’re here to stay.

They’re frozen.

They’re here to stay.

Time can be frozen for the rest of life of the rest of time.

The photo album is a thing, obviously, gaining in popularity.

We brought that up a while back, but family pictures, you can pass them down from generation to generation.

War, for good or for bad, the actual imagery and the, you know, the disaster that man can bring, it’s actually recorded.

The triumph of athletic competitions.

Well, true.

Yeah.

I mean, you know what I mean? Obviously, all these things lead to video and that is a huge thing in culture.

But I’m sticking more with the idea of like frozen time as opposed to video because, like I said, we’ll get into a little bit more in the next episode.

But before you had that, your only experience of seeing these things and, you know, seeing these athletes and, you know, actors and actresses, like I said with their little, you know, precursor trading card, are these images.

Science, it’s it I mean, I don’t think you can even enumerate, you know, like it’s it’s limited, limitless uh things you can do with this.

Yeah.

It’s just it just changes the world.

What about marketing and ads and, you know, that Yeah, that Yeah.

Obviously, you know, it’s like drawings are good, pictures are better.

It’s just like the newspaper.

Right.

The Library of Congress has a really cool website.

Uh I don’t know if you’ve ever been on there, but um so they have images of photos collected around the turn of the century.

So, jumping ahead just a little bit when we start getting into our next thing.

Uh but to make the cultural point of photography itself, there’s a picture of Theodore Roosevelt in a carriage on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I thought that was kind of neat, 1905.

Like, you think about like, are there pictures? Yeah, there’s pictures of Teddy Roosevelt.

Yeah.

Army-Navy game, 1916.

Photograph showing the first powered controlled stained flight by the Wright brothers in 1903.

True, yeah.

Where you get to see that? Images used in the exhibit at the Paris Exposition, 1900.

This is describing the lives of African Americans in 1900, spearheaded by W.E.B.

Du Bois.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, they’re over there explaining the life here to the people in Europe.

Yeah.

Uh you know, photography is here and its effects are not going anywhere.

It’s here to stay.

And this is the turning point between our story part one and part two.

You can say we started with those those brilliant hardworking people and their ingenuity and trying to and actually succeeding at capturing recording light involves to the point where we’re at now, which is is modern photography.

And it’s a process that’s expensive and it’s difficult and it’s dangerous only for the most dedicated people, but with dry plates, we see the future, right? Like, you know, you see the ability to buy a camera, buy a dry plate, stand outside and take a picture.

Right.

And then send that off to someone to print it for me.

I don’t know to print it.

And I don’t print it.

So, Yeah.

So, that’s why this is the turning point.

And it happens quick.

We go from one to the other pretty quick, and then we realize that the goalpost moves because now we’re going to jump into a different world.

But for right now, the camera that is cheap, easy, and safe, and for everyone, it’s on the horizon.

We can see it coming.

The come a camera that doesn’t require a photographer, instead of a camera that allows anyone to take simple pictures, we can see that coming.

And that, that’s how you get from zero pictures to over a trillion in 2020s, right? Like, that’s how that’s going to happen.

That’s how the world’s going to change.

And we will pick up there next time with the dry plate cameras and how we eventually get to the show’s namesake.

The brownie.

The brownie camera.

Which I I just loved forever.

Okay.

Uh so and with that, we’re going to wrap it up for today.

So, it’s time for the uh big takeaway from Julia.

Julia, what was your uh favorite part of the show today? So, I I like the sound of the wet plate plate process.

I know that that sounds crazy, but it sounds like I like the the pressure of it.

I like that you know it’s a professional that is going to do this, you know, he has to know how much he has to keep that hole open for to get the right amount of exposure because how sunny it is, how dark it is, and all this.

That’s just there’s something about that process that it just to have one knowledgeable person is just so Yeah. you know, there’s just something about it, you know.

And it’s the opposite of where we’re going.

And that’s why it’s interesting, right? Like, that’s why I this is this is this is my summation.

I’m not going to go into another summation.

I’ve done it 20 times.

But this is what I think is why my editorial part of this episode, like I said, you know, like the facts are the facts, you know, I’m documenting them as clearly as correctly as I can, as many sources as possible.

But to me, my editorial part of this is, like I said, you’re going from basically just trying to capture light over thousands of years ending up, hey, we caught a picture, and then over like a hundred years, you’re trying to make even less, what I said, what becomes this like dangerous, difficult, expensive product that’s only used by like professional people, and then boom, you’re going to flip around and a hundred years later, it’s going to literally just be like this afterthought of recording every little thing that happens to the point that people are more obsessed with the picture than they are with reality.

Something to think about at the very least.

But let’s wrap it up on a positive note.

Think about how amazing it is that we have these photographs, maybe go dig through, look at some pictures of some loved ones, some special moments, and treasure them.

I mean, it’s really just an amazing thing when you think about it, maybe not look past to just the simple beautiful treasures that we do have.

And that’s going to do it for today’s show.

First, don’t forget that the sources used in this century are all located on the website, informatorium56.com.

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We wish you a happy, healthy, and beautiful journey until we see you again.

Look on the bright side and good luck.

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