337
ferent thicknesses of opal glass and glass plates and to
keep them in register during inspection. The increased
use of vignetting and the growth of the postcard in the
1890s also led to manufacturers producing specialist
printing frames. The production of the 3¼ inch square
photographic lantern slides from the late 1880s well into
the twentieth century was also undertaken by contact
printing on to glass where the negative was of the same
size as the intended slide, once the glass slide had been
exposed, usually in daylight, developed and toned the
emulsion side was protected with a cover glass and the
edged taped with passé partout.
The printing frame remained an essential part of the
photographer’s darkroom throughout the nineteenth
century. Photographers studios or printing works from
the bigger studios such as Elliott and Fry such would
often employ large rows of printing frames to produce
the volume of prints they required. For the amateur the
contact print offered a convenient way of producing
prints used limited equipment.
The development of the practice of enlarging nega-
tives and smaller roll fi lm formats did little to dampen
their use right through to the 1960s when the rise of low-
priced photo-fi nishing saw a reduced need for amateur
photographers to undertake this task. In the later part
of the nineteenth century professionals would use them
to make proofs and amateurs would use them to make
their fi nal prints. Their basic design remained largely
unaltered throughout the century with an increasing
variety of designs refl ecting the rise in the number of
photographic processes.
Michael Pritchard
See Also: Emulsion; Talbot, William Henry Fox;
Herschel, Sir John Frederick William; Cyanotype;
Salted Paper Print; Albumen Print; Kodak; Lantern
Slides; Bromide Print; Mounting, Matting, Passe-
Partout, Framing, Presentation; Elliott, Joseph John &
Fry, Clarence Edmund; and Roll Film.
Further Reading
Thornthwaite, W. H., A Guide to Photography, London, Horne,
Thornthwaite and Wood, 1853.
Cox, Frederick, A Compendium of Photography, London, Fred-
erick Cox, 1866.
Price List of Photographic Apparatus and Materials 1900,
George Houghton & Son, 1901.
COPYRIGHT
For twelve years after Daguerre and Talbot announced
the invention of photography, its products were of
relatively limited application and diffi cult to reproduce.
With the invention, though, of the wet plate collodion
process it became much easier to produce multiple cop-
ies of images, and commercial exploitation through such
media as carte-de-visite, stereo cards and cabinet prints
rapidly followed. Photography became a profi table busi-
ness, but competition was fi erce and the product needed
protection from illicit copying by those wishing to have
a share but unwilling or unable to make the necessary
investment. Photographers needed the protection of the
law, and the answer lay in copyright.
In the United Kingdom, limited protection was
available, it is true, through the common law, but only
to the photographer himself and only while the work
remained unpublished. That was of little practical use
to commercial fi rms. Statutory copyright protection was
given to sculptures, to maps, charts and plans (as books)
and to engravings and prints (including lithographs), but
none of this was apt for the protection of photographs.
In 1857 the Society of Arts, which four years earlier
had helped the foundation of the Photographic Society,
drew attention to the serious defects in the law which left
painting, drawing and photography largely unprotected.
The Society began lobbying for a new statute, with
active support (directly through the Society’s Artistic
Copyright Committee, or indirectly through articles in
the artistic press) from notable fi gures such as Roger
Fenton, Henry Cole and Francis Frith. It faced fi erce
opposition to the proposal to cover photographs notably
on the grounds that they were mere mechanical repro-
ductions, not true art, but ultimately commercial and
diplomatic imperatives led the government to act.
In 1862, with a new Great Exhibition looming at
which it was hoped that overseas photographers would
exhibit, Parliament passed the Fine Arts Copyright Act.
This gave protection against copying to the authors of
paintings, drawings and photographs, whether published
or not, with a requirement that they be registered at Sta-
tioners’ Hall before the protection was enforceable. The
statute as it dealt with photographs was not tested until- That fi rst case remains, even in the twenty-fi rst
century, of importance because it defi ned as the author
of a photograph the person who was ‘the inventive or
master mind’ behind it. In subsequent cases commercial
photographic companies were found to own copyright in
portraits they took only if they had solicited the sitting
and the sitter had not paid for the pictures taken.
In America, Congress was not far behind. Since
1790, acts had given copyright protection to ‘the au-
thor or authors’ of books, maps, prints, engravings and
musical works, so long as works were registered in
district courts (from 1870 in the Library of Congress).
In 1865, an amendment Act was passed to extend these
provisions to photographs, ‘upon the same conditions
as to the authors of prints and engravings.’ Unlike in
the United Kingdom, though, the American provisions
had to conform with a written constitution, which al-
lowed protection only for ‘writings,’ so the act faced a
challenge. The Supreme Court concluded in 1884 that