CONGRESSES AND CONFERENCES

ON THE CENTENARY OF THE DISCOVERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The Academy of Sciences of the USSR, represented by its Departments of Physical-Mathematical, Chemical, and Technical Sciences and by the Physical Institute, marked the centenary of the discovery of photography with a joint ceremonial session on April 3 at the Moscow House of Scientists.

Although it is difficult to associate such a major invention, which required the efforts of many workers, with a single definite date, nevertheless the year 1839 is generally accepted as the year of the birth of photography. In that year the secretary of the French Academy—the famous physicist and astronomer Arago—reported for the first time (on January 7) to the Academy of Sciences on Daguerre’s invention, and on August 19 made an equally detailed communication on this method. In the same year the first information was published about the work of the Englishman Fox Talbot, whose method, although at that time less perfected than Daguerre’s, was more closely connected with the modern technique of obtaining photographic images with the aid of silver bromide.

In a brief introductory address, Academician S. I. Vavilov characterized the significance of the discovery of photography, which, without exaggeration, may be compared with the significance of the invention of printing. He dwelt on the enormous influence of photography on the development of science, which owes to photography a number of brilliant discoveries in the most diverse fields. Its application was especially fruitful in anthropology, geography, spectroscopy, and, in recent decades, in the physics of the atom and the nucleus.

In an extensive report, Prof. T. P. Kravets (Leningrad) presented a series of interesting details on the history of the discovery of photography, based on valuable unpublished documents recently found in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. These materials were collected by the Russian academician I. Chr. Hamel (1788–1862), who took a special interest in the history of technology, and were handed over by him to the Academy of Sciences, where they have been preserved in the Archives.

At present their study and preparation for publication are being completed. Of particular interest is the family correspondence of the Niépce brothers, revealing their major role in the invention of photography. The work of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who invented “heliography”—a method for obtaining photographic images that made it possible to reproduce and multiply them and that is very close to one of the methods still used in reproduction technology—was of great importance. As is known, this invention was made by Niépce several years before the publication of Daguerre’s method; both inventors concluded an agreement on joint work on a new method of obtaining images and on its joint exploitation. After Arago’s report, the French government secured for both inventors a lifelong pension, which, after the death of Nicéphore Niépce, passed to his son Isidore, alongside the still-existing merits to photography.

Daguerre’s role remains indisputable: he developed and perfected the first practical method of obtaining images by means of photochemical and chemical processes, created the first photographic camera, and popularized the principle of photography. Although his method was subsequently replaced by a more convenient and

practical method allowing the reproduction of images, we are still struck by the beauty and perfection of daguerreotypes, which possess a permanence still unattainable by our photographs.

In the report of Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences Prof. A. I. Rabinovich, the present state of the theory of the photographic process was covered. Although one of the outstanding photochemists of our time wrote as early as 1921 that the photographic plate, being a work of art and having rendered invaluable assistance to the development of science, could not itself become an object of scientific investigation, the needs of technology have created a new field of scientific knowledge that may boldly be called “photographic science.” A number of journals in the most important languages and special research institutes at educational institutions and industrial enterprises are devoted to it. Soviet scientists have taken a considerable part in the development of this science, as is illustrated by the growth in the number of Soviet reports at the International Congresses on scientific and applied photography: in 1928 in London there was not a single Soviet report, in 1931 in Dresden—11, and in 1935 in Paris—21 reports—more than a quarter of all the communications presented. Soviet science has had particular success in studying those processes that occur in the manufacture of photographic materials—the first and second “ripening” of light-sensitive emulsions. Here the advantages of Soviet science have been evident, free from the secrecy that compels capitalist firms to conceal their achievements from one another.

The works of Prof. K. V. Chibisov and K. S. Lyalykov showed that the first and second ripening are, respectively, a physical process of growth of silver bromide microcrystals and a chemical process of formation on their surface of “centers of sensitivity,” or “sensitizing nuclei.” The old problem of the hidden or latent image, which appears in the photographic layer upon exposure and is revealed only during chemical processing, is now nearing its solution thanks to the brilliant works of R. Pohl with his collaborators (Göttingen) and Prof. T. P. Kravets and M. V. Savostyanova with collaborators (Leningrad), who showed that the latent image consists of microscopic colloidal particles of silver, which play the role of development centers. The works of M. V. Savostyanova and S. Cherdyn’tsev also helped to understand the nature of the Herschel effect (the disappearance of the latent image under the action upon it of long-wavelength radiation) and the Weigert effect (the appearance of dichroism upon exposure of the photographic layer to polarized light). In conclusion, the theory of the English physicists Mott and Gurney, which appeared in 1938 and gives a single elegant scheme of the entire photographic process from the point of view of modern quantum mechanics but, unfortunately, has not yet been confirmed by experimental investigations, was briefly set forth.

The report of Senior Research Associate of the State Optical Institute I. A. Chernyi (Leningrad) was devoted to “The Problem of Color in Photography and Cinematography.” The speaker briefly described the development of methods for obtaining color images, dwelling especially on the hydrotype method of color cinema, which made it possible for the American firm “Technicolor” to release for the first time on the commercial screen animated and feature color films, partly familiar to the Soviet viewer from Disney pictures and The Cuckoo. This method was mastered by the State Optical Institute and by the Lenkino studios. The mosaics The Duckling and The Frog, shown by I. A. Chernyi, demonstrated that the technicolor method has indeed been mastered by us and is ready for release to the mass screen. An illustration to I. A. Chernyi’s report was also the exhibition of color photographs organized by the production-technical workshops “Photographic Artist” in the foyer of the House of Scientists. A number of color prints on paper, in the format up to 50×60 cm, showed the work of our artist-photographers (D. Debabov, G. Zelma,

(P. Klepikova, S. Friedland, Ya. Khalip, and others) and technicians (N. Tikhomirova, Z. Mozglyakova, and others) on the methods of three-color carbure and chromate, which make it possible, from three color-separated negatives, to obtain images on paper in natural colors.

Color photography, which appeared earlier than ordinary photography, long before Daguerre’s method, lagged in its development and fell far behind black-and-white photography. Its rapid growth began only when the enormous light sensitivity of silver salts could be used for color photography as well. But even at the present time the process of obtaining a color picture is so complex and lengthy that it is scarcely accessible to the ordinary amateur. Further improvements of this process, which will undoubtedly follow in the coming years, should give color photography and cinematography the same broad and universal dissemination as black-and-white photography has received, having developed over 100 years into one of the powerful instruments of human culture.

A. Rabinovich, Moscow