1510
the Continent until about 1890 but was less adaptable
to the extremes of temperature found in North America
and Australia. Woodbury also adapted the process for
watermarking paper.
When visiting the United States in 1871, Woodbury
acquired the English rights to the popular Sciopticon
lantern projector. He was a prolific and versatile
inventor, holding more than twenty patents, including
improvements to optical lanterns and photography
from a balloon. His last patent was for a method of
making paper transparent for use as a support for the
emulsion.
Woodbury was awarded many honours including a
gold medal at the 1872 Moscow Polytechnic Exposition
and the 1883 Progress Medal of The Royal Photographic
Society.
Although widely acknowledged and respected, he
lacked the business acumen needed to capitalise on
his inventions. Woodbury contracted diabetes and died
on 5 September 1885 at Margate, England, from an
accidental overdose of laudanum.
Woodbury’s importance as a photographer lies in
his photographs of Australia and Java which are now of
historical value. His fame as an inventor is assured by the
legacy of superb prints made by the process which bears
his name. Time has proved that the claim to permanence
of Woodburytype prints was essentially correct.
Alan F. Elliott
Biography
Walter Bentley Woodbury, born in Manchester UK
in 1834, joined the Australian gold-rush in 1852 but
turned to photography. In 1857 he opened a success-
ful photographic studio in Java. Returning to England
in 1863 he devoted his life to inventions including the
Woodburytype photomechanical printing process. He
died at Margate, UK, in 1885.
See also: Negretti and Zambra; Projectors;
Wet Collodion negative; and Woodburytype,
Woodburygravure.
Further Reading
Eder, Josef Maria (trans. E. Epstean), History of Photography,
397, 587–9, 600, New York: Columbia University Press,
1945.
Elliott, Alan F., ‘Walter Woodbury: Pioneer Collodionist and
Inventor.’ The Collodion Journal (July 1998): 8–9.
Wachlin, Steven, Woodbury and Page, Photographers, Java,
Leiden: Kitlv Press, 1994.
Wills, Camfi eld, and Deirdre Camfi eld, ‘Walter Bentley Wood-
bury 1834–1885.’ The Photographic Journal (December
1985): 551–4; (January 1986): 41.
Woodbury, Walter Bentley, The Amateur Photographer, (1884):
185–186; (1885): 334–355.
——, The British Journal of Photography (1885):167–168, 581,
596.
——, The Photographic News (1861): 78–79, 91–92, 126–127.
——, (ed. Alan F. Elliott), The Woodbury Papers: Letters and
Documents held by the Royal Photographic Society. Privately
printed, 1996.WOODBURYTYPE,
WOODBURYGRAVURE
Woodburytype is one of the fi nest of all photomechani-
cal reproduction processes, producing continuous tone
images that resemble carbon prints. Originally known
as the photo-relief process (or, in France, photoglyptie),
woodburytype was invented in 1864 by Walter Bentley
Woodbury, although Joseph Wilson Swan’s photo-mez-
zotint process, conceived earlier but published later, is
virtually identical. The end product is a relief image
in semi-transparent pigmented gelatin, thick in the
shadows and thin in the highlights, giving excellent
photographic gradation.
The process of making woodburytypes begins with
the exposure and development of a positive relief image
in a thick fi lm of dichromated gelatin. Exposure through
a negative differentially hardens the sensitized gelatin,
which is developed by washing away the unexposed
parts in warm water. This master relief is then used to
produce a shallow negative intaglio printing mold with
the highlights as hills and the shadows as hollows, usually
by sandwiching the dried, hardened relief against a sheet
of lead in a powerful hydraulic press, an idea Woodbury
took from nature printing. Considerable pressure is re-
quired: about 4 tons per square inch, or 500 kilograms
per square centimeter, depending on the thickness and
hardness of the lead, and the size and nature of the image.
In the early 1870s, a hydraulic press capable of 450 tons
pressure cost £156, although a short time later, Tangyes
of Birmingham began manufacturing a compact wood-
burytype hydraulic press with a short throw, suitable for
10 × 8 inch (25 × 20 cm) plates, which sold for about
£60 (by way of comparison, an Albion press, suitable
for letterpress printing, cost about £10).
Woodburytype prints are cast (rather than conven-
tionally printed) using a special, less powerful, hand
press capable of positioning paper perfectly fl at against
the mould. A small amount of warm pigmented gelatin
“ink” is poured onto the center of the lightly greased,
carefully leveled mould, and covered with a sheet of
specially-prepared, waterproof paper. The top plate of
the press is swung down and closed, forcing the gelatin
into the contours of the mould. After about a minute (to
allow the gelatin to set and adhere to the paper), the print
is peeled out of the press, plunged into an alum bath to
harden, rinsed, dried, and fi nally trimmed and mounted
onto either a book page or printed card mount.