Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

A NUMBER of processes have been devised for applying photography to the production of blocks or plates, from which impressions may be taken by purely mechanical methods. These processes are of three kinds. They consist of blocks or printing surfaces in which (I) the parts intended to show up in print are sunk, cut, or […]

COMMENTING upon a camera devised by Mr. Friese-Greene for the rapid taking of consecutive photographic views, a photographic journal, in February, 1890, remarked that ” the chief value of the machine, or of a modification thereof, may hereafter be found to be in the direction not contemplated by the inventors—at least they have said nothing […]

IT will be remembered that Niepce’s attention was first turned to the problem of fixing the image of the camera obscura by his experiments in lithographic printing; and his earliest successes in photography were in the reproduction of engravings. In other words, they were experiments in photo-printing. Fox-Talbot went a step still further, and his […]

NOTWITHSTANDING that the collodion process, particularly in its wet state, rendered such important services to photography, it is today almost wholly a thing of the past. The later generation of photographers, indeed, know little or nothing about it, and probably the majority would not know how to use it if they wished. As early as […]

THE history of photography is a curious one. It shows how important discoveries are the outcome, not of one mind, but of the investigations of numberless men, working entirely independently of each other, and to ends altogether diverse. It falls to one man perhaps, by a lucky hit, to put the finishing touch to an […]