The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-24
PHOTOGRAPHY HAS UNIQUE HISTORY Greatest Collection in World Is Now Open for Inspec-
 tiOn by the Public

| washington, October 23.-(Special )-The history of photography is well illustrated by a series of cameras, plates and prints exhibited in the United States National museum. This collection of photographic paraphernalia and photographs, which is without exception the most complete in the world, has been collected and classi- fled by MT. T. w. Smllie, photograp pher of the museum for the past 45 years Work of nearly all of the early inventors is to be seen, and what Is said to be the first American camera, that made on Da- guerra's specifications for pr. S. F. B. Moore in 1889.
 The earliest camera, the camera ob- scura, used by Euclid in 300 B. C., was later improved upon by Bacon and others in the thirteenth century, and further im- proved by Porta in the sixteenth century It is said that the action of light on fused silver chloride was used to make a pho- tograph of the solar-spectrum by Scheele in TIT. Unfortunately there was then no method known for fixing the prints and in consequence only limitations of this meth cd are to be seen in the museum collec- tion. Thomas Wedgwood experimented along this same line in 1902, and read a paper on the subject before a British scientific institution about that time.
 The first successful inquirer to secure permanent pictures through the influence of the suns rays seems to have been Mons. Nicephore Niepce, who in 1924 eff fected the process of heliography by the use of varnish made of asphaltum, or bitumen of Judea, applied to a highly polished metal plate or glass plate, and developed by essential oil of lavender and white petroleum. The plate was exposed for several hours, the image etched, and then prints were made as from an ordi- nary etching. The museum collection includes one of the first permanent pho tograpbs printed from light etched plate by the photographic process. This print is from Niepce's plate made in 1924
 There are also several fine examples of Daguerres work made in 1889 and later His process, which came to be known as the Daguerreotype process, consisted of exposing a highly polished silvered cop per plate, gumed with iodine, in a cam- era few minutes, developing the ex- posed plate with mercury vapor and fix ing the image with hyo-sulphite. This PAO$Cco erations; cleaning and polishing the plate. coating the plate with sensitive ioduret of silver, adjusting and exposing the plate in the camera obscura, developing the invisible picture after the exposure. and removing the sensitive coating so that no further change would take place in the picture. Daguerre and Niepce found that they were pursuing experiments of the ssme nature and went into partnership.
 Six months prior to M. Daguerres pub lications concerning his process. MT. Fox Talbot communicated his photokra pl1ic discoveries to the Royal society, and aft erward issued an account of his scheme for preparing sensitive paper for pho- tographic reproduction which he called photogenic drawings He prepared his paper by washing a sheet of fine writing paper with solutions of salt and silver nitrate. When dried this proved of use in securing prints of leaves. etc., in the camera obscura. Later be used iodide of potassium and other chemicals to perfect his system. Talbot's second process of paper making was patended in 1s41, and was known as the Calotype. The main advance in this system was the ability of the discoverer to make unlimited prints of his picture
 Talbot obtained a third photographic patent on a process for photoeraphing on unglazed procelain which man by the name of Malone improved somewhat and eventually became associated with Mr. Talbot
 The museum collection, besides includ- Ing many fine and unique examples of these first photographic processes, has much material on modern practical pho- tography, including examples of differ ent printing papers, and plate, stereo- scopic pictures fashlight paraphernalia. x-ray and colored photographs, astro- physical photographs, and some early ex- ampleS of moving nicflIre mo kin0