Saturday, February 20, 2010

Current Reading at New 55

Photographic Silver Halide Diffusion Processes
Authors: Andre Rott, Dipl Ing, Edith Weyde, and Dr Ing.
Focal Press, London 1972

Preface by Professor W. F. Berg

Excerpt: "The diffusion transfer process is one of the few genuinely original inventions in photography...Nevertheless, photography had to wait for about 100 years, before this inventive step was taken, and the idea matured, almost simultaneously and independently in the minds of no fewer than three inventors to whom the term genius can very fittingly be applied: Rott and Weyde, who are responsible for the present book which is devoted to Document Copying, and Land who will be the author of the second book in this series on Instantaneous Photography".

Interesting, and I will be looking all over for part two, "Instantaneous Photography", which I see listed in no Focal Press index.  In the meantime, 1930s diffusion transfer inventors Rott and Weyde are keeping me entertained with a lot of information about emulsions, development rates, transfer kinetics, reagents, and nucleation schemes, which are of highest interest to New 55.  

Plate 1 in this book shows the very first "accidental" silver diffusion transfer print ever made, and discovered by Rott in 1939.  I'll scan it in later.

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