Photography

The invention of silver gelatine based photography changed the world as profoundly as any invention, including the printing press, railroads, airplanes and the personal computer. Silver gelatin media launched photography as a tool of creativity that expanded into a medium that became a powerful component of the world. As with all great discoveries and technological advances, it came from discoveries leading up to its use and the thousands of applications that followed. The Silver Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who contributed to silver’s amazing role in the history of the world.

Hosea Ballou Grosh

Hosea Ballou Grosh

— 1857

Born: 1826, Pennsylvania, USA
Died: September 2, 1857, Gold Canyon, Nevada Territory (age 31)

The brothers, Ethan and Hosea, were sons of Reverend Aaron B. Grosh, a Universalist minister. They were raised with strong intellectual and moral values, which shaped their adventurous and...

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Sir John Frederick William Herschel

Sir John Frederick William Herschel

— 1871

Sir John Herschel was a scientist and astronomer, like his father, Sir William Herschel, who discovered Uranus. He floundered in his early schooling before focusing on math and at the youthful age of 21 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London. He worked on a variety of projects...

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John Johnson

John Johnson

— 1871

John Johnson was born at Saco, Maine, U.S.A. in 1813. He was brought up in New Hampshire and, for a time, worked as an assistant to a jeweller and watchmaker in New York. He formed a business partnership with Alexander Simon Wolcott (1804 -1844), a New York instrument maker.

1839 was the year...

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Edward Herbert Land

Edward Herbert Land

— 1991

November 26, 1848, marks a major day in the history of photography as American Edward Land introduced his Model 95 camera, which produced sepia-coloured prints in about one minute. It was the achievement of his efforts between 1943 and 1947 to create self-developing photography.

Land called his...

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Louis Aim Auguston Le Prince

Louis Aim Auguston Le Prince

— 1890

Born in Metz, France, Louis Aim studied chemistry and physics at university and then worked as a photographer and painter. By the 1880s, he was one of many inventors trying to master the technology for what would become film. Le Prince's first camera had 16 lenses, which took "sequential...

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Richard Leach Maddox

Richard Leach Maddox

— 1902

Richard Maddox was an English photographer and physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. Dry plate is a glass plate coated with a gelatin emulsion of silver bromide. It can be stored until exposure, and after exposure it can be brought back to a darkroom...

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Peter Mawdsley

Peter Mawdsley

— 1909

Peter Mawdsley invented the first photographic paper, the silver gelatin print, in 1873. It was the first photographic process that submerged exposed paper into chemicals, rather than using light, as the chief agent in developing an image. Due to its stability and ease of use, developing-out...

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Joseph Nicéphore  Niépce

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

— 1833

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, is credited as the inventor of photography. He was a French inventor, who first gained fame, with his older brother Claude Niépce, for their invention of the internal combustion engine. When lithography began advancing he experimented with this new printing technique....

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Wilhelm Rontgen

Wilhelm Rontgen

— 1923

Wihelm Rontgen was a German physicist who was the first person to systematically produce and detect electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays or Röntgen rays. His discovery of X-rays was a great revolution in the fields of physics and medicine and electrified the...

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Johann Heinrich Schulze

Johann Heinrich Schulze

— 1744

Johann Schulze was a German physician and anatomy professor who made a significant discovery in the development of photography when he observed that silver salts darkened when exposed to sunlight. In 1725, while attempting to create a phosphorescent material by combining a slurry of chalk with...

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