780
Photographic Society of Ireland from 1890. Joly was
commissioned by Arthur Rimbaud, Director, Dunsink
Observatory, County Dublin, to design camera shutters
which would overcome the diffi culties associated with
stellar photography. On 18 November 1891 his fi ndings
in this area were read to the foremost scientifi c research
body in Ireland, the Royal Dublin Society, of which
he was a Fellow and later President. His other early
publications on photography included an examination
of the effect of temperature upon the sensitiveness of
photographic plates.
Yet it was within the fi eld of colour photography
that he was to produce his most innovative work. Joly’s
process followed on from earlier research undertaken by
James Clerk Maxwell, André Louis Ducos du Hauron,
Charles Cros and Frederick Ives. Maxwell and others
had already experimented with additive processes based
upon the principle that all the colours of light can be made
by combining different proportions of the three primary
colours. However, none of the previous solutions had re-
sulted in a colour image which could be observed without
the assistance of a viewing apparatus. Joly announced his
process in the Photographic Times of 23 November 1894
and patented it in the same year. His method required
only a single fi lter and was the fi rst screen plate process to
be made commercially available. Essentially, it involved
the scoring of a series of fi ne coloured lines onto a single
glass plate through which the image could then be taken.
After development and reversal of the photographic plate
it was viewed through a similar fi lter and resulted “in
vivid colour with all the realism and relief conferred by
colour and colour perspective.”
Joly gave a more detailed account of his discovery
in a paper read to the Royal Dublin Society on 26 June
- In it, he referred to Hermann W. Vogel’s work on
the sensitising of photographic emulsions to the green
and yellow portions of the spectrum and to Ives’s im-
ages which consisted of three superimposed colours.
Lithographic reproductions of Joly’s process appeared
alongside the published paper. An additional note refers
to the early work of du Hauron and the fact that in 1869
he had suggested the use of a lined screen similar to that
used by Joly. The note infers that du Hauron’s sugges-
tions were not acted upon as his theory of colour was
fl awed. In 1894, Joly’s process received coverage in
the French periodical Les Inventions nouvelles and was
noted and acknowledged by du Hauron in the Photo-
Revue Africaine on 1 April and 15 May 1895. In the
same year Joly was to exhibit his colour photographs
at the Royal Dublin Society whilst a group of American
businessmen established the Natural Colour Photo
Co. in Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, with a view to
producing the screens commercially.
Unfortunately Joly was to encounter legal diffi culties
as an American, James W. McDonough, of Chicago, had
arrived upon a similar process which involved the coat-
ing of a plate with coloured particles of powdered glass.
As a result of these legal problems Joly was required to
visit the United States in September 1895 and again in
March and July of 1896. McDonough whose process
was patented in England in 1892 also manufactured his
plates commercially. However, his method was expen-
sive to produce and his fi rm the International Color
Photo Company went bankrupt.
Likewise, Joly’s process did not achieve the wide-
spread acceptance which he had hoped for. He encoun-
tered technical diffi culties which hampered commercial
production of the screens and the failure to produce
colour prints on paper limited their appeal. The fi rst
truly successful commercial colour process, the Au-
tochrome, did not appear until 1907. It was invented
by August and Louis Lumière in 1903 and was also a
three colour additive process. The mosaic screen was
made of minute grains of starch which had been dyed
and strewn onto a plate. Its success was partly due to
the commercial strategies employed by the brothers
and the excellent results which were achieved by their
factory produced plates.
Joly did not lose interest in photography and was
to apply for over 40 photography related patents in
Britain, the United States and France during the period
1868–1903. He was President of the Photographic
Society of Ireland from 1902–1903. On 11 February
1896 he exhibited his X-ray photographs, the fi rst such
taken in Ireland, to the Dublin University Experimental
Association. This interest was the foundation of his
work on radiation. In 1897 he was appointed Professor
of Geology and Mineralogy in Trinity College, Dublin
a post which he was to hold for 36 years. In 1914 he
developed a method of radium therapy which was sub-
sequently used for cancer treatment around the world.
He continued to publish widely in the fi elds of botany,
mineralogy, geology and experimental physics. He also
worked to improve conditions for the students to whom
he gave weekly lantern slide shows until his death on
8 December 1933.
The National Library of Ireland holds over half of
the extant Joly slides in its Photographic Archive. Many
of the 306 slides depict botanical specimens but other
subjects include landscapes, printed advertisements and
portraits. Joly material is also held by the Science Mu-
seum, London; the Physics Department, Trinity College,
Dublin and the Kodak Museum, Harrow, London.
Orla FitzpatrickBiography
Joly the scientist, educator and photographer was born
in Bracknagh, County Offaly, Ireland in 1857. His father
John Plunket Joly, Rector of Clonsat (Offaly) came from