Draper, John William. “Experiments on Solar Light”, in Journal of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, vols 19 and 20, 1837 (full year). Half calf and marbled boards. 9.5x6”, 490pp (8 plates), 442pp (2 plates). Condition: Scuffing and wear to spines though the gilt stamped titles are quite legible—the volumes seem to have received some use over the years. Ex-library, with stamps on the title page. The textblock is crisp and strong. Good copies. $500
Draper articles appear in four parts and comprising 36pp with 3 plates: vol 19, June, pp 469-479, plate; vol 20, July, August, October , pp 38-46, 114-125, 250-253 (two plates).
Also in volume 20: a significant report:
(Samuel Morse.) “Electro-Magnetic Telegraph”, pp 323-325. Here the editor relates a successful experiment by Morse transmitting the message “Successful experiment with Telegraph”, with his one-wire (conductor) recording telegraph. (This is pre-Morse code, so the words were transmitted via numerals found in a telegraphic dictionary.)
There is also a report on the first Russian railroad, as well as the book review of the first American edition of Lyell's Principles of Geology.
This is the pioneer Draper's first paper containing sections relating to the photographic arts, though it seems to have been not much noticed or referenced, the best early ref to it coming from Draper himself. The paper appeared in four parts over two volumes of the Journal of the Franklin Institute in 1837, parts of it being published three years later in 1840 in the Philosophical Magazine, where Draper's ideas seem to have been more widely recognized. Draper wrote in the PM:
- “Most of these have been published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia; but as they do not appear to have been noticed in England, I will ask the favour of a page or two of your excellent Magazine, to give my testimony on a subject, which now appears to excite so much interest.”
On the 1837 appearance and the work in general, The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography contributes:
- "As early as 1837, while still in Virginia, [Draper] had followed the example of Wedgwood and Davy in making temporary copies of objects by the action of light in sensitized surfaces. When the details of Daguerre's process for fixing camera images were published in various New York newspapers on 20 September 1839, Draper was ready for the greatest remaining challenge, to take a photographic portrait. A New York mechanic, Alexander S. Wolcott, apparently won the race by 7 October. But if Draper knew of this, he persisted in his own experiments and succeeded in taking a portrait not later than December 1839. His communication to the Philosophical Magazine, dated 31 March 1840, was the first report received in Europe of any photographer's success in portraiture. The superb likeness of his sister Dorothy Catharine, taken not later than July 1840, with an exposure of sixty-five seconds, seems to be the oldest surviving photographic portrait. In the busy winter of 1839–1840, Draper also took the first photograph of the moon and launched, in a very modest way, the age of astronomical photography.”
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