522
Further Reading
Dibner, B., Faraday Discloses Electromagnetic Induction, New
York: Burndy Library, 1949.
Faraday, M., Experimental Researches in Electricity, in The
Great Books Series, v. 45, ed. R.M. Hutchins, Chicago: Wm.
Benton, 1952.
Herschel, Sir J., Light, in The Encyclopedia Metropolitana,
London: John J. Griffi n, 1827.
Jackson, M.W., Spectrum of Belief: Joseph Frauenhoffer and the
Craft of Precision Optics, Cambridge: MIT, 2000.
Tyndall, J., Faraday as a Discoverer, London: Longmans, Green,
5th ed., 1894.
FARDON, GEORGE ROBINSON
(1807–1886)
American and Canadian photographer
Fardon was born in 1807 in Birmingham, England. No
information is available about his ancestry or his early
life there, nor when he emigrated to the United States.
Internet genealogical Web sites suggest people bearing
the name Fardon in the Birmingham area were Quakers.
Fardon fi rst appears in North America as a commission
merchant at 42 Maiden Lane (Daggett’s New York City
Directory, 1848–49); he lived at 84 Greenwich Street.
How or when he learned photography is not known. He
appears to have been attracted to California by the 1849
gold rush. Although his arrival date in San Francisco
is still a mystery, he was, judging by the photographs
published in his San Francisco Album (1856), active by
the mid-1850s. His Victoria obituary, which credits him
with introducing the wet-plate process to San Francisco,
possibly as early as 1852, also suggests he arrived in
California in 1849. Fardon’s reputation as a photog-
rapher in San Francisco rests upon his landscape and
architectural views. According to Peter Palmquist and
Thomas Kailbourn (2000, 223), this set him apart from
his contemporaries. Some of Fardon’s landscape images
clearly depicted the photo studio facades of James May
Ford and Robert H. Vance. Fardon, however, did not
advertise as extensively as these contemporaries. There
is even some evidence that he either learned photography
from Ford or acquired some his San Francisco views
(Palmquist and Kailbourn, 2000, 224, note 3).
Like many photographers in other urban settings hop-
ing to boost their sales and promote their home, Fardon
created a seven-part panorama of San Francisco in May
1855 (Bancroft Library, University of California Berke-
ley and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California;
cited in Palmquist and Kailbourn, 2000, 224). During
1855 and into the early summer of 1856 he continued to
produce striking photographs of the city’s architecture
from street level and elevated vantage points atop build-
ings and various hills. These photographs, including the
seven-part panorama as separate images, were com-
piled into a book, San Francisco Album: Photographs
of the Most Beautiful Views and Public Buildings of
San Francisco. First advertised in September 1856 by
Herre & Bauer (William Herre and John Bauer), this
publication is considered the earliest work about an
American city illustrated completely with photographs.
Each copy was unique and contained between 30 and 33
salted-paper prints from wet-collodion negatives. Only
nine copies are known to exist today (Fardon, 1999,
173). Marvin R. Nathan’s catalogue raisonné of every
extant San Francisco view by Fardon totals 65 (Far-
don, 1999, 135–171). Some of Fardon’s San Francisco
landscape photographs, including a second panorama
from around 1860, have not survived and are known
only through artistic representations. Two examples are
“The Merchants’ Exchange, San Francisco, California,”
published in Ballou’s Pictorial Weekly on May 23, 1857
(Huntington Library, San Marino, California; cited
in Fardon, 1999, p. 118; this view may be based on a
photograph, “Views in California” no. 8, California
Historical Society, San Francisco), and “San Fran-
cisco in 1860” published by Hutchings & Rosenfi eld
(Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley;
cited in Fardon, 1999, p. 115). Among the images in
San Francisco Album is one depicting “Fort Vigilance,”
(also known as “Fort Gunnybags”), the Montgomery
Block Building on Sacramento Street, with sandbags
lining its front and guards on the rooftop. Fardon took
at least two other photographs of this building which
headquartered the Vigilance Committee: one view, taken
May 22, 1856, depicts the moment after the lynching of
two men accused of homicide, while the other is a side
view of Sacramento Street from Front Street which also
shows the fortifi cations erected by the Vigilance Com-
mittee. The lynching photograph is considered one of
the earliest examples on the North American West Coast
of photographic reporting (Fardon, 1999, 166). William
Herre, one of Fardon’s publishers, was a member of the
1856 Vigilance Committee.
Fardon competed in public exhibitions of his pho-
tographs at least three times in his career. The fi rst two
occasions were in San Francisco at an Industrial Exhi-
bition sponsored by the Mechanics’ Institute in 1857
and 1858. At the latter exhibit he was awarded a bronze
medal for his nine patent leather photographs. These
same photographs may have subsequently formed the
centerpiece of his photographic display, which included
other examples of studio and outdoor group portraiture,
landscape and architectural views taken in Victoria, Brit-
ish colony of Vancouver Island, and shown at the 1862
London International Exhibition. Fardon was a member
of the very large committee which oversaw the donation
of materials for the exhibit. He did not win any prizes for
his contribution. Frances George Claudet, his colleague
in New Westminster, capital city of the neighbouring