PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELECTRIC LIGHT.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1285, 2 May 1878, Page 3

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELECTRIC LIGHT.

[London “Times.”] Some two years ago Mr Yan dor Weyde, an American artist, whoso paintings hare been placed upon the line at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, wished to be photographed, and ho went for the purpose to the studio of a well-known London operator. He went daily for a week before there was light enough for a successful sitting, and the photographer, in reply to Mr Van der VVeyde’s not unnatural murmurs, said that the Americans were an inventive race, and that he had better find out a way to bottle sunlight and bring it over. The half jesting challenge induced him to lay aside his art, and to devote himself entirely to the problem of rendering artificial light available for all photographic purposes ; and, after ( wo years spent in experiments, he has at last been brilliantly and completely successful. In his studio in Regent street he now produces every evening by artificial light, portraits which, if they have been equalled, have certainly never been surpassed. In the perfect modelling of the features, the delicacy of the lights and shadows, and the general truthfulness of the delineation, these pictures leave nolhipg to be desired. The light employed

for this purpose is the electric beam, produced by a dynamo-electric mac’ ine, worked by a gas engine in the basement of the house, and resembling in its general arrangements the Siemens light for lighthouses. The carbon points arc placed in the focus of a parabolic reflector, 40in. in diameter, made of tin, which is enamelled white in the inside, and which may be roughly compared to a large bowl, and this being turned towards the sitter. In front of the light, so as to screen it from the sitter, is a metal disc 4in. or Sin. in diameter ; and, if this were all, the sitter, cut off from the direct rays of the beam itself, would receive parallel rays from the inner surface of the reflector. Mr Yan der Weyde has found, however, his purpose is best served by convergent rays, and ho obtains them by closing the mouth of the reflector with a French lens—that is to say, a convex lens built of concentric rings of prisms, which has the effect of rendering the rays convergent to a point some 6ft. from its surface. The whole apparatus—reflector, disc, and lens—is suspended from the ceiling by an ingenious arrangement of pulleys and counterpoises, such that the light can be made to fall upon the sitter from any point or at any angle ; and the whole figure is flooded, so to speak by a convergent beam of soft and pleasant ■white light, which does not trouble the eyes in the least degree, but which is of such actinic power that the pictures are taken by an exposure of only eight or ton seconds. The size of the beam is sufficient to include the whole figure in the erect posture, and also to allow a considerable amplitude of train to a lady. The new arrangement of light is found to be as applicable to printing from negatives as to producing them ; and the facilities which Mr Fan der Wcydo’s invention affords for taking portraits in evening dress will not bo the least of its advantages. As far as can be foreseen, the reflector seems likely to have many other uses, and to admit of being applied to other kinds of artificial light. Mr Yan der Weyde thinks that one of its future uses will be the lighting of places, such as the operating rooms of hospitals, where surgical operations of emergency may be performed at night; and, with a generosity which is doubtless suggested by experience, ho has specially exempted this mode of employing his invention from the operation of his patent, so that for surgical purposes it is free to the whole world. Ho served with much distinction during the American civil war, and was four times wounded in action, so that his sympathy with the victims of surgery is not surprising. The illumination of microscopic objects seems another promising field for his reflector, since the light afforded is almost identical in quality with that of n white cloud, and can be increased or diminished in intensity at pleasure.