564
natives, who watched him in fear and trembling, expect-
ing an explosion every moment.”
Fry’s published visual account of the journey com-
prised 150 145mm × 195mm carbon prints on pages
465mm x 300mm, of the places and the peoples the Pio-
neer Corps encountered along their arduous journey.
He is believed to have left Africa after the expedition,
and traveled to Australia and New Zealand.
John Hannavy
FULHAME, ELIZABETH
(active 1780s–1790s)
English chemist
Mrs Elizabeth Fulhame’s scant personal details are
known almost without exception by her own few com-
ments, published in the preface of her 1794 chemical
treatise, An Essay on Combustion with a view to a
new art of Dying and Painting wherein the phlogistic
and antiphlogistic hypotheses are proved erroneous
(London: J. Cooper). The book became rapidly known
in chemical circles, having been donated to the Royal
Society Library in 1795 by the author, and translated into
German in 1798, by August Gottfried Ludwig Lentin
(1760–1823) a tutor in Chemistry at the Georg Augustus
University, Göttingen. The book was later reprinted in an
American edition of 1810. It is the practical part of her
treatise that concerns photographic chemistry, although
it was her theory on combustion that earned her praise
and election as an honorary member of the Philadelphia
Chemical Society. Fulhame precipitated silver and gold
salts not only to dye patterns on cloth, but also to paint
rivers on maps. In making these experiments, Fulhame
was an important part of the 18th century movement
to use metal salts and chemical reactions to make pat-
terns visible. Her demonstration of the reduction of
silver proved infl uential to many later experiments in
photochemistry, embodying the principle of ‘hypo,’ as
invented by J.F.W. Herschel.
Kelley WilderFYFFE, ANDREW (1792–1861)
Scottish photographer
Andrew Fyffe was a minor, but briefl y infl uential, fi gure
in early Scottish photography. He was the eldest son
of Andrew Fyffe, dissector in anatomy at Edinburgh
University. The younger Fyffe graduated in medicine
in 1814 but earned his living primarily as a teacher of
chemistry. He became Vice-President of the Society
of Arts in Edinburgh in 1839, the same year as the an-
nouncements of the fi rst practicable photographic pro-
cesses. Fyffe began investigations into the chemistry of
the early processes and embarked on a series of popular
and well-attended lectures where he described Talbot’s
photogenic drawing along with his own improvements.
He recommended paper sensitised by silver phosphate as
an alternative to silver chloride, outlined a procedure for
making direct positives, showed how photography could
be applied to lithography, and suggested replacing the
lens of a camera with a mirror. By January 1840, Fyffe
was able to give perceptive comments on daguerreotype
practice to an enthusiastic Scottish public. Although
the Society of Arts for Scotland awarded Fyffe a silver
medal for his photographic work, he soon returned to
teaching. He died in Edinburgh in 1861. A lithograph
derived from photographic images by Fyffe survives in
St Andrews University Library.
John Ward