Reviews

Abstract

This 1967 New York University doctoral thesis is a highly competent study of the interaction between American landscape painting and the nascent practice of photography between 1839, when the daguerreotype was introduced, and 1880, when the first successful half-tone appeared in the New York Graphic, a portent of competitive undoing for the graphic artist and his role in pictorial reproduction. Early in the period, the influence of the daguerreotype was strongly apparent in portraiture. Photography's main impact on landscape painting awaited later procedural innovations: the wet-collodion process (1851), with negatives that permitted multiple prints; the stereograph (1854), that soared into popularity after the Civil War; the dry-plate process (1871), that obviated the need for the portable darkroom. And it was after mid-century that a fully collaborative relationship between landscapist and photographer was stimulated by two developments: exploration and study of the American West by government- directed surveys, and the burgeoning of a popular illustrated press.     

Daguerreotypes in the National Archives of Canada

Abstract

The announcement of the daguerreotype process to the French scientific community in August 1839 spread through the Western world like a shockwave. The British North American colonies comprising Canada East and Canada West (now Quebec and Ontario) and the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were no exceptions. Rumours of the discovery had been published in Canadian newspapers as early as 3 May 1839.¹ As early as 1840 we find advertisements in Canadian newspapers offering daguerreotype portraits by itinerant photographers who first made known and popularized the process. There are no extant examples of these first Canadian attempts.²     

Daguerre's Demonstrations in 1839 at the Palais d'Orsay

Abstract

RDW: Researching some aspects of the course of events in Paris in 1839 regarding the daguerreotype, I realized that the place where Daguerre first demonstrated his process in public had not been reported in the past with any consistency. Had such a situation arisen because various interpretations of the original French could be involved? For example, the word ‘hotel’, having a different meaning in French than in English, would be an obvious reason why a French address could be rendered in different ways in English publications.     

John Szarkowski

Abstract

Photography was practised in India soon after its discovery in 1839 (witness the work of John McCosh about 1843–44), but not until the mid-1850s did the East India Company start to appropriate the medium for its own use.     

Early photography in Eastern Europe

Abstract

At the session of the French Academy of Sciences held on 7th January 1839, D. F. Arago (1786–1853), secretary of the Academy, announced that the fixation of the picture seen in the camera obscura had been achieved. Hasznos Mulatságok, a Hungarian-language paper published in Pest, made its readers acquainted with Daguerre's invention in its issue of 2nd February, an extremely short time, considering the communication and travel conditions then prevailing. Newspaper stories of the new invention stimulated a lively interest among Hungarian readers, and the papers continued to feature reports on photography whenever the occasion warranted: In its 7th March issue, a Pest weekly, Athenaeum, published an article on daguerreotypy written by Jules Janin, a French journalist and art critic. Hungarian society accepted Janin's opinion and was prepared to welcome photography as an artistic expression of reality and truth.     

Histories of Photography 1839–1939

Abstract

In this essay I will attempt to sketch the historiography of the history of photography, concerning myself mainly with the histories that were published between 1839 and 1939 in book form rather than in periodicals. This is therefore, first a study of how photographic history was presented by the medium ‘history book’ and second an attempt at finding the sources for certain approaches to and changes in the writing of photographic history.     

Early Serbian photography

Abstract

At the onset of the industrial revolution, at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, while all civilized nations of the world were building up their tcchnological resources, Serbia was making its first attempts to free itself from Turkish occupation. When photography was announced in 1839, Serbia was a small country, still partly governed by Turkey. A newly formed class of city dwellers tried eagerly to make up, at an accelerated pace, for all that it had missed in culture and civilization while dominated by the Turks. In their efforts they were aided by numerous émigré Serbs from Vojvodina¹ who were invited and offered positions in government by Duke Milo: ObrenoviC (1780–1860). Many foreign craftsmen, skilled in newly developed techniques, arrived from Western Europe in search of higher earnings, and likewise participated in this cultural awakening.     

Romania

Abstract

The history of photography in Romania is closely linked with the trend of political events, and it is therefore useful to give some information about the Romanian states between 1839 and 1900, the period with which we are here concerned.     

‘A merry Christmas,dear, from me.’

Abstract

The photograph, the penny post and the Christmas card made their entrance on the English scene hard on each other's heels, the one in 1839, the next in 1840, and the in 1843. As postal services and printing techniques improved, the Christmas card took its place to the manner born among the cherished traditions of the season. In the early 1860s printing firms began to devote a large part of their attention to the making and designing of cards; the first trickle of greetings exchanged by close friends became a flood, and by January 1880 Punch was complaining of ‘the sleet of Christmas cards’. The novelty had become established. A long article on the history of the cards appeared in the Christmas Supplement of the London Times in 1883, and for some years trom the late 1870s it was usual for the major newspapers and journals to publish a review of each crop of new designs. Competition was fierce, and manufacturers were prepared to try any motif that came to hand, Irom reproductions of the Old Masters to daring flirts on swings and dead robins lying claws up in the snow.     

Talbot's natural magic

Abstract

We might begin with a passage from Talbot's first public utterance about his derivation of the process soon to be named ‘photography’. The date is 31 January 1839, the place is the Royal Society in London, and it is six days after Michael Faraday had communicated to the Royal Institution that the idea of making pictures with light had an English as well as a French origin. That evening Talbot read his paper Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, outlining the history of his involvement with experiments using nitrate of silver to make images on paper, the successes and failures of prior investigators, and the accuracy of the process for copying flat objects. In due course, in a section captioned ‘On the Art of Fixing a Shadow’, he asserts:     

Hillotypes

Abstract

Among the daguerreotype holdings of the National Museum of American History's Photographic History Collection (PHC) are sixty-two unusual and unique plates. These images, mosdy copies of flat artwork, are the only known examples of a mysterious and highly contested colour daguerreotype process known as Hillotype.     

1839 — The year of Daguerre

Abstract

The year 1839 belonged to Daguerre. In broad outline, the story of his spectacular invention is very well known, but many of the detailed circumstances remain to be explored. The purpose of this essay is to trace the progress of the invention by reference to contemporary newspaper reports.     

Between orientalist clichés and images of modernization

Abstract

In contemporary writing about nineteenth-century photography of the Middle East it has become almost a cliche to describe many of these images as ‘Orientalist’-that is, reflecting or propagating a system of representation that creates an essentialized difference between the ‘Orient’ and the ‘West’. Most of these scholars draw on Edward Said's influential book Orientalism, which traces how Europe manufactured an imaginary Orient through literary works and the social sciences.¹ For example, Nissan N. Perez writes in his book Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East (1839–1885) that ‘Literature, painting, and photography fit the real Orient into the imaginary or mental mold existing in the Westerner's mind .... These attitudes are mirrored in many of the photographs taken during this time [the nineteenth century] ... Either staged or carefully selected from a large array of possibilities, they became living visual documents to prove an imaginary reality’. ²     

The impact of diversifying and de novo firms on regional innovation performance in an emerging industry: a longitudinal study of the U.S. ethanol industry

There is growing interest among strategy scholars and policy makers regarding the influence of diversifying and de novo firms on regional innovation activities in emerging industries. This paper examines how the population, entry, and exit of diversifying and de novo firms in regions influence regional innovation output in an emerging industry. Using longitudinal data from the U.S. ethanol industry, we find that the local population and exit of diversifying and de novo firms have differing impacts on regional innovation output. Our findings contribute to the literature on firm heterogeneity, agglomeration, and regional innovation systems.     

An application of fast multipole method in analyzing acoustic filters

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the acoustic performance of mufflers. As a numerical scheme for analyzing an acoustic filter, the boundary element method is more suitable than are domain methods, such as the finite element method, which has to mesh the domain. However, the coefficient matrices established by the boundary element method are full and often non‐symmetrical. In order to decrease the computational time required, the fast multipole method has been applied. The fast multipole method, when compared with the boundary element method, reduces CPU time from an order of N² to Nlog^γ N, where N is the number of unknowns and γ is a constant. This study focused on the different geometries of plates within simple expansion acoustic filters. Numerical analysis demonstrates that the transmission loss at a particular frequency performance is better when employing a simple expansion acoustic filter with plates.     

Jules Itier,Daguerreotypist

Abstract

Jules Itier's work with daguerreotypes is a recent discovery¹. A group of 40 examples has been acquired by the Musée de Bièvres (Essonne), and about 80 plates have been traced to a private collection. This body of work conveys the idea of travel photography as it was practised during the 1840s, although only a few examples of the genre survive². E. Lacan, a critic for La Lumière, commented at the time: ‘the application of daguerreotypy to travel offered more than one practical difficulty, and did not respond to the great need of our century, which was/or popuiarization’³. In the first place, the transportation of a considerable number of silvered plates during a long journey was cumbersome and costly and, above all, the images that were finally brought hack ⁴ were unique. It was possible to make an admirable private collection, but there was no practical way to share with the general public the fascinating views that had been captured in faraway places, often at great expense and with great effort.     

Walker Evans' American Photographs

Abstract

It is an article of faith among photographers and scholars that Walker Evans' American Photographs is a sequence of pictures rather than a simple collection or anthology; that is to say that the photographs should be looked at in the order in which they are given. Indeed the book is often spoken of as innovative and influential in precisely that respect (among others). Some years ago I set out to learn more about the origin of Evans' sequence in the context of a broader investigation of American Photographs.¹ That study (which remained unpublished) has now been superseded in many ways by Alan Trachtenberg's insightful discussion in the book Reading American Photographs, which appeared in 1989.² Nevertheless some of my original material remains useful and I offer it here largely intact, with only a small number of revisions and additions.     

A robust,four-node,quadrilateral element for stress analysis of functionally graded plates through higher-order theories

ABSTRACT

A hybrid-mixed, four-node, quadrilateral element for the three-dimensional (3D) stress analysis of functionally graded (FG) plates using the method of sampling surfaces (SaS) is developed. The SaS formulation is based on choosing an inside the plate body N, not equally spaced SaS parallel to the middle surface, in order to introduce the displacements of these surfaces as basic plate variables. Such a choice of unknowns, with the consequent use of Lagrange polynomials of the degree N ? 1 in the assumed distributions of displacements, strains, and mechanical properties through the thickness leads to a robust FG plate formulation. All SaS are located at Chebyshev polynomial nodes that permit one to minimize uniformly the error due to the Lagrange interpolation. To avoid shear locking and spurious zero-energy modes, the assumed natural strain method is employed. The proposed four-node quadrilateral element passes 3D patch tests for FG plates and exhibits a superior performance in the case of coarse distorted meshes. It can be useful for the 3D stress analysis of thin and thick metal/ceramic plates because the SaS formulation gives an opportunity to obtain the solutions with a prescribed accuracy, which asymptotically approach the 3D exact solutions of elasticity as the number of SaS tends to infinity.     

Dynamic characterization of the thickness-tapered laminated plant fiber-reinforced polymer composite plates

Evolution of the laminated woven natural fiber fabric-reinforced polymer composite structures makes a way to the development of the non-uniform laminated composite structures in order to achieve the stiffness variation throughout the structure. An attempt is made in this work to carry out the experimental and numerical investigations on the dynamic characteristics of the thickness-tapered laminated woven jute/epoxy and woven aloe/epoxy composite plates. The governing differential equations of motion for the thickness-tapered laminated composite plate are developed using the h-p version FEM based on higher order shear deformation theory. The validation of the present finite element formulation is carried out by comparing the natural frequencies obtained using the finite element formulation with those natural frequencies determined experimentally. The developed model is further validated with the available literature works on tapered composite plate to confirm the efficiency of h-p version FEM. This work also explores the study of the vibrational characteristics of composite plates under the influence of plant fiber’s transverse isotropic material characteristics and porosity associated with plant fiber composites through the elastic constants evaluated in the author’s previous work. Also the influences of aspect ratios, ply orientations, and taper angles under various end conditions on the natural frequencies of the woven jute/epoxy composite plate are studied using the present finite element formulation. The forced vibration response of the thickness-tapered laminated woven jute/epoxy composite plate under the harmonic force excitation is carried out considering CFCF and CFFF end conditions.