196
Contrary to many written accounts, however, it was
not the fi rst such design. William Henry Fox Talbot
proposed a design for a daguerreotype camera with
an integral processing facility as early as 1839, and
Antoine Claudet suggested a similar design two years
later. For collodion photography, the fi rst camera with
integrated processing was suggested by William New-
ton in 1851, and the inventor of the wet plate process,
Frederick Scott Archer became the fi rst to put such an
idea into practice with his original camera design of
1853.
What made the Dubroni camera successful, when
introduced a quarter of a century after such an instru-
ment had fi rst been suggested, was the compactness of
its design, and the simplicity of its operation. While
earlier suggestions involved designs in which large pro-
cessing tanks were suspended beneath the back of the
camera, Bourdin’s design used the camera body itself
as the sensitizing and processing chamber. So success-
ful was the idea, that Bourdin eventually manufactured
and marketed the camera in at least fi ve different sizes,
from the smallest which took a plate 45mm square,
through quarter plate, to the largest which equated with
a ‘postcard’ format of approximately 88 × 127mm.
The camera was of a simple wooden box design
inside which was a ceramic or glass lining, with a bowl
shaped recess at the bottom to contain the sensitising
and later the processing chemicals. The glass negative
plate, already coated with collodion, was placed against
the open back of the ceramic lining, and held in place by
the hinged back plate of the camera. The silver nitrate
sensitizer was introduced via a pipette at the top of the
camera, and allowed to fl ow over the collodion plate by
tilting the camera on its back. The excess sensitizing
solution was sucked out using the same pipette, and the
camera was ready for exposure.
The camera was fi tted with an f/4 lens, permitting
exposures on the small plate of about three to fi ve sec-
onds outdoors, after which, the lens cap fi rmly back in
place, the camera became the processing chamber.
Pyrogallic acid was used to develop the plate–again
introduced through the top via a pipette–and the camera
tilted on its back to facilitate development. As the cam-
era back was fi tted with a red or yellow glass inspec-
tion hatch, the progress of the development could be
checked visually. After the developer had been sucked
out, a conventional ‘hypo’ fi xer was introduced, and
the camera tilted on its back again.
The camera’s major drawback was the rigorous
cleaning which was required before a new plate could
be fi xed to the back, and a second exposure made as
any trace of hypo left in the camera body would ruin
the next exposure.
John Hannavy
Further Reading
Auer, Michel and Michèle, Encyclopédie internationale des
photographes des débuts à nos jours, CD-Rom, Neuchâtel,
Éd. Ides et Calendes, diffusion Hazan, 1997.
Bulletin de la Société Française de Photographie, Tome XI,
Avril 1865.
Coe, Brian, Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures.
Gothenburg, Sweden: Nordbok, 1978.
Frizot, Michel (ed.), Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie,
Bordas, Paris, 1994.
Lothrop, Eaton S., Jr. A Century of Cameras from the Collection of
the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman
House. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Morgan & Morgan, 1973.
McKeown, Jim & McKeown, Joan. McKeown’s Price Guide to
Antique & Classic Cameras: 1995–1996. Grantsburg, WI:
Centennial Photo, 1994.BOURNE, JOHN COOKE (1814–1896)
English engraver and photographer
John Cooke Bourne was born in London on September
1st 1814, the son of a hat-maker in Covent Garden. He
became a pupil of the J M W Turner’s favourite engraver
John Pye in the 1830s, and was quickly recognised as
an accomplished artist in his own right.
Bourne was commissioned to illustrate the construc-
tion of the London and Birmingham Railway, and later
the Great Western Railway, and his plates, drawn with
the aid of the camera lucida, have a quality which today
would be described as photo-realistic.
In 1848 he was commissioned by the engineer Charles
Blacker Vignoles, initially as an artist and later as both
artist and photographer, to chronicle the construction
of the fi rst permanent bridge over the River Dneiper in
Kiev. The project involved weekly photography of the
project from late 1848 until the bridge’s completion
in October 1853. The images represent the fi rst such
use of photography to record progress. In 1852, Roger
Fenton worked alongside him in Kiev. A small number
of Bourne’s images survive. They were exhibited in
London in 1854 and 1855.
In 1855 Bourne was granted a patent for a novel
camera design with integral processing which was
lightweight and could be collapsed into a small case
for travelling photographers. No images produced with
such a camera have yet been located.
John HannavyBOYER, ALDEN SCOTT (1887–1953)
Born in Iowa on January 29, 1887, Alden Scott Boyer
was an important and enthusiastic collector. His profes-
sional life began as a pharmacist, which led him to open
a business in Chicago specializing in chemical products,
perfumes, and cosmetics. Collecting dominated the pri-