234234
CABINET CARDS
ing landscape photographers, such as W. H. Jackson,
Carleton E. Watkins, and Adolphe Braun appeared in
the cabinet format, especially after the fi nancial panic
of 1873 caused havoc with the American economy and
made large format landscapes too expensive for most
patrons. Occasionally cabinet cards were used for ad-
vertising, harnessing the versatility and ubiquity of the
format to hawk locomotives, face powder, fruit trees,
machinery and patent medicines. The vast majority of
cabinet cards served loftier purposes, recording for pos-
terity the tangible evidence of family milestones—from
the birth of a new baby to college graduations and the
burial of a beloved relative. Millions of these personal
mementos were made in studios around the world, and
they account for the longevity and popularity of the
cabinet card format.
William. B. Becker
See Also: Carte de Visite; Albumen Print; Wet-plate
Collodion Negatives; Silver Prints; Dry-plate; Sarony,
Napoleon; Nadar; Brady, Mathew; Cameron, Julia
Margaret; Jackson, W. H.; Watkins, Carleton E.; and
Braun, Adolphe.
Further Reading
Bevis Hillier, Victorian Studio Photographs, David R. Godine,
Boston, 1976.
Source unknown, quoted in Robert Taft, Photography and
the American Scene, Dover Publications, New York, 1964,
346–347.
Robert Taft, Photography and the American Scene, Dover Pub-
lications, New York, 1964, 346–347.
CADETT AND NEALL DRY PLATE LTD.
The business of Cadett & Neall was established in
August 1892 as a collaboration between James Wil-
liam Thomas Cadett, a chemical engineer, and Walter
Neall, a photographic dry plate and paper manufacturer
and a medical doctor. The company’s trademark ‘swift
as light’ was registered on 16 September 1892. Cadett
appears to have been the technical force behind the
business.
James Cadett had patented a pneumatic shutter
(British patent number 4367 of 21 November 1877)
and patented two further shutters in 1878 and 1884.
He was elected a member of the Photographic Society
in 1878. Two further patents in 1894 in collaboration
with the Reverend James Randolph Courtenay Gale
MA described improvements to packing and storing
photographic chemicals as semi-liquids in tins and for
photographic dark slides. His career between 1877 and
1892 is unknown.
Cadett’s principal contribution to photography was to
the mechanisation of plate and fi lm coating. His fi rst and
most signifi cant patent was number 9886 of 31 July 1886
which described a coating machine with two improve-
ments for regulating the thickness of the emulsion being
laid down on to the plate or fi lm and for regulating the
delivery of the emulsion from the storage trough to the
glass plate. His two subsequent patents of 10 October
1887 and 2 April 1889 further refi ned these.
From it’s founding in 1892 Cadett and Neall grew
very rapidly and by October the fi rm reported that it’s
plate sales were doubling every month. In Spring 1896
it reported an increase in sales of 62 percent for the ten
months ending October 1895 compared to the previous
year and an increase of 52 percent for January and Feb-
ruary 1896 compared to the equivalent period in 1895.
By February 1898 the fi rm claimed sales of ‘millions’
of plates and the largest sale in the United Kingdom of
any make.
To cope with this growth, the fi rm enlarged its Gre-
ville Works in late 1892 and the following year built
it’s Crampshaw Works which would double production
capacity and these were enlarged in 1896 and in 1898 its
Victoria Works were built for paper and fi lm production.
All were located in Ashtead, Surrey. New machinery
was installed in mid-1894 for meeting the demand for
its Velox developer.
From the outset the fi rm adopted the marking of its
sensitised materials with Hurter and Driffi eld numbers
indicating sensitivity to a carefully calibrated standard.
Marion & Co had been the fi rst to adopt the H & D scale
and Alexander Cowan from Marions assisted Cadett &
Neall in applying the standard to their own plates and
manufacturing. This was partly responsible for the high
quality of the fi rm’s goods. Film was added to the fi rm’s
output from late 1892–1893 and specialised plates for
photomechanical work in 1893. The orthochromatic
plate was discussed by Cadett in a paper read to the
Photographic Society and published in the Journal of
the Photographic Society on 28 February 1896 and
the fi rm began making an orthochromatic plate com-
mercially that same year under the name Spectrum,
with a fi ne grain high speed version being introduced
in February 1899. The fi rm claimed it was ‘the only
plate of its kind in the world.’ Its Lightning plate was
claimed the ‘quickest in the world.’ The fi rm’s plates
were rated the second most popular in a vote by readers
of Photographic Life.
Away from plates the fi rm produced a range of chemi-
cal developers with Velox being the most popular and
in 1898 a range of Printing Out Papers, Bromide and
other specialised papers were launched in various sizes
and surface fi nishes. The following year two types of
gelatino-chloride papers were added with different tonal
characteristics and speeds and in late 1899 a platinum
black bromide paper in a variety of surfaces was an-
nounced.