LEGRAY, GUSTAVE. - THE INVENTION OF THE WAXED-PAPER PROCESS IN PHOTOGRAPHY.

Note sur un nouveau mode de préparation du papier photographique négatif. (Séance du Lundi 8 December 1851).

(Paris, Bachelier), 1851. 4to. Without wrappers. In "Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences", Vol. 33, No 23. Pp. (631-) 648. (Entire issue offered). Legray's paper: pp. 643-644. Clean and fine.

First printing of a landmark paper in photography, introducing his invention of the waxed-paper process.

"Gustave Legray brought photograpy on paper to its culmination in the 1850s with the waxed-paper process. A struggling young artist..., Legray abandoned painting for photography around 1848, and with the financial backing of the Comte de Briges opened a portrai studio on the top floor of the same house as the Bisson brothers, in the Madelaine district. His reputation, however, was made not in the field of portraiture but as an architectural and landscape photographer. He also taught photography and "nearly all renowned photographers of the day have been his pupils". Legray devoted a good deal of time to experiments and wrote a number of manuals. His invention of the waxed-paper proces dates to before 25 Febr. 1851, but the manipulation was not published until the following December (the paper offered)..... The wxed-paper process was far more than a modification of the calotype, as can be seen from the substances used in oidizing paper - rice water, sugar of milk, iodide of potassium, cyanide of potassium, fluoride of potassium (to which was later added white honey and the white of some egg). Sensitizing was done with an acid solution of nitrate of silver and development took place with gallic acid.... The process took its name from the fact that the paper was waxed before iodizing, instead of merely after exposure, to facilitate printing." (Helmut E. R. K. Gernsheim).

Order-nr.: 49595