1513
the equipment. He presented his ideas to the Societé
Française de Photographie in early November 1860,
and within a week La Lumière reported that he had
sold his design to A. A. E. Disdéri for a reported
20,000 francs.
John Hannavy
WRATTEN, FREDERICK CHARLES
LUTHER (1840–1926)
Very little is known about the life of Frederick Charles
Luther Wratten, except that he initially embarked on
a career as a school teacher, yet his legacy to the de-
velopment of the modern photographic process was
signifi cant, and his name lives on in the industry eighty
years after his death.
Wratten started his photographic career in 1861,
aged twenty-one, as a clerk in Joseph Solomon’s Pho-
tographic & Optical Warehouse in London’s Red Lion
Square, and by the mid 1870s, he had become convinced
that the future of dry plates lay not with collodion but
gelatin. In 1877 he established the company Wratten &
Wainwright based in Great Queen Street, London, in
partnership with Henry Wainwright. In their fi rst year
they marketed their own brand of collodion dry plates
and in early 1878 they marketed their fi rst gelatin dry
plates—London Ordinary Gelatin Dry Plates—which
were fi fteen times as fast as their collodion equivalents.
Four British companies pioneered the manufacture of
gelatine dry plates, all launching products in that same
year—Mawson & Swan in Newcastle (who had pio-
neered the process in 1877), The Liverpool Dry Plate
and Photographic Printing Company, Samuel Fry & Co.
of Kingston-on-Thames, and Wratten & Wainwright. In
these early stages of mass-production, emulsion manu-
facture was beset by many problems, not least of which
was batch-to-batch consistency.
Wratten’s pioneering innovation in the preparation
of the gelatine silver bromide emulsion sought to tackle
those variations. Early attempts at manufacturing dry
plate emulsions had failed to recognise the problems
of effectively washing the emulsion to rid it of the ex-
cess bromides and other chemical impurities. Wratten
introduced the idea of ‘noodling’ as an aid to cleans-
ing the emulsion. By chilling and setting the gelatine
silver bromide mixture, shredding the resulting jelly
and then washing the shredded ‘noodles’—resetting
and re-noodling as required—Wratten’s emulsions
were thus washed much more effectively, resulting in
their plates exhibiting enhanced purity and enhanced
consistency from batch to batch. This in turn gave
greater consistency in emulsion speed and therefore in
exposure reliability.
Their plates were aggressively marketed throughout
Europe, and Eder (1932) identifi ed them as the fi rst
gelatine dry plates to be marketed in Austria. And yet,
it was still a ‘kitchen sink’ business. According to Mees
(1961), Mrs Wratten made the emulsion in her kitchen,
and the emulsion was hand poured on to the plates. A
batch of emulsion fi lled twenty teapots, and the pouring
was done through the narrow teapot spout.
Wratten & Wainwright later advertised their ‘Lon-
don’ brand dry plates as the oldest-established brand in
the world, and their retail premises sold a wide range of
photographic materials and accessories. By 1879 they
had introduced their London Instantaneous Plates, with
a sensitivity over forty times as great as collodion.
In the mid 1880s, Wratten ‘Slow,’ ‘Ordinary’ and
‘Instantaneous’ plates were amongst the fi rst commer-
cial brands to be subjected to rigorous testing by Hurter
& Driffi eld. Driffi eld used Wratten Slow plates as the
standard when testing the effectiveness of a range of
developers, surely a tribute to their consistency.
From 1887 Wratten & Wainwright also marketed a
range of own-branded cameras, and although there is no
conclusive evidence that they manufactured the cameras
themselves, they did advertise themselves as ‘apparatus
makers’ in the London Post Offi ce Directories between
1887 and 1894. Channing and Dunn (1995) list Wratten
& Wainwright cameras as early as 1879—when they
advertised their New Double Camera ‘for instantaneous
work’ and four other designs between 1886 and 1895.
Some researchers have suggested that the cameras may
have been made for them by other London makers, in-
cluding, perhaps, William Morley of Islington.
By 1896, their ‘Photographic Depot’ advertised that
it supplied plates and chemicals, and photographic
accessories. No mention is made of the ‘Photographic
Apparatus Department’ which had fi gured in early
listings.
A move to Croydon in 1890, to a factory in three
converted houses in Canterbury Road, put emulsion
manufacture and coating on to a proper commercial
footing, with a coating machine made for them by Smith
of Zurich. The company continued to develop improved
emulsions and, in 1906, became the fi rst company in
Britain to manufacture and market panchromatic plates,
incorporating the work on dye sensitisation which had
been done by other researchers. The dye sensitisers
used in their early pan plates were produced for them
by Höhst in Germany.
At that time a young chemist had recently been ap-
pointed to the position of Joint Managing Director of
Wratten & Wainwright Ltd, who by that time had ex-
panded their manufacturing facility at Canterbury Road
in Croydon. Dr. C. E. Kenneth Mees (1882–1860) had
joined the company as a researcher, and within a few
months had developed their fi rst panchromatic plate.
Attempts by earlier companies at dye sensitisation had
involved bathing the coated plate in the sensitisers. Mees