Frederick E. Ives develops the half-tone engraving process whereby photographic and other images can be reproduced simultaneously with text. With the slogan 'You press the button and we do the rest', the major innovation was the combination of a ready-loaded camera with a developing and printing service. George Davison exhibits The Onion Field in the royal Photographic Society's Annual Exhibition. This image taken with a pin-hole camera and printed on rough paper heralded the beginning of impressionistic photography. The first independent speed rating for all emulsions is devised by two British scientists, Hurter and Driffield.
Photographs start to supplant hand-drawn illustrations in popular publications.
1891 Gabriel Lippmann of the Sorbonne succeeds in producing a coloured image directly in the camera from one exposure, using the principle of light intereference first investigated by Newton. For this Lippmann received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1908. The process required long exposures, and results could not be copied, however. The Linked Ring is formed. A society dedicated to the furthering of artistic photography.