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| Tony & Eileen Brooks Web Page | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Somewhere outside Vienna, May 1999 |
Tony and Eileen enjoying new wine at an inn on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria, May 1999 Normally you can find us hiding in Arlington, Virginia | |||||||||||||||||||
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In 1727 the German anatomy professor Johann Schulze proved that light darkened silver salts Over 50 years later Thomas Wedgwood (son of Josiah Wegwood)and Sir Humphry Davy recorded images on leather sensitized with Silver Chloride However, they did not find a means of fixing a permanent image. In June 1793 Joseph Niepce and his brother Claude began experementing with silver compounds,but before completing their experiments the brothers went off to invent the internal combustion engine (1807) and the bicycle (1816). In 1826 Joseph successfully made the earliest surviving permanent photograph in the courtyard of his country estate from the upper window of the house. He used a pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea which hardens on exposure to light. The exposure time was about 8 hours! Unable to improve the process by reducing the very long exposure times Niepce formed a partnership with Louis Jacques Mandel Daguerre on 14 December 1829. However, Niepce died in 1833 before improved results had been achieved. Daguerre soon switched to using Silver coated copper plates which were exposed to iodine vapour. The breakthrough came in 1835 when Daguerre accidently discovered the invisible latent image could be developed by exposing the plate to Mercury vapour. Exposure times were reduced from several hours to 30 minutes. In 1837 Daguerre discovered how to fix the image with a solution of table salt (later improved with the use of sodium thiosulphate). In 1839 Daguerre and Niepce's son sold the full rights to the Daguerreotype process to the French Government in return for life annuities. On 19 August 1839 the Daguerreotype process was announced to the world at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences by Dominique Frances Arago. Daguerre was later made an officer of the Legion of Honour. | The earliest know photograph by Joseph Niepce, 1826 | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Colin and Isaac | Our son Colin and New Grandson, Isaac Alexander, born on June 15, 2000 | |||||||||||||||||||
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