Every detail of the branches of the photographic business to which they are more especially devoted were freely shown us, and “No Admittance” over the doors of their inmost sanctuaries came to mean for us, “Walk in; you are heartily welcome.”We should be glad to tell our readers of all that we saw in the two establishments of theirs which we visited, but this would take the whole space which we must distribute among several subdivisions of a subject that offers many points of interest. We must confine ourselves to a few glimpses and sketches.
The guests of the neighboring hotels,as they dally with their morning’s omelet,
little imagine what varied uses come out of the shells which furnished them their anticipatory repast of disappointed chickens. If they had visited Mr. Anthony’s upper rooms, they would have seen a row of young women before certain broad, shallow pans filled with the glairy albumen which once enveloped those potential fowls.
The one next us takes a large sheet of photographic paper, (a paper made in Europe for this special purpose, very thin, smooth, and compact,) and floats it evenly on the surface of the albumen. Presently she lifts’ it very carefully by
the turned-up corners and hangs it bias, as a seamstress might say, that is, cornerwise; on a string, to dry. This “albumenized” paper is sold most extensively to photographers, who find it cheaper to buy than to prepare it. It keeps for a long time uninjured, and is "sensitized” when wanted.
In another portion of the same establishment are great collections of the chemical substances used in photography. To give an idea of the scale on which these are required, we may state that the estimate of the annual consumption of the precious metals for photographic purposes, in this country, is set down at ten tons for silver and half a ton for gold. Vast quantities of the hyposulphite of soda, which, we shall see, plays an important part in the process of preparing the negative plate and finishing the positive print, are also demanded.
Quotation from: "Doings of the Sunbeam" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Atlantic MonthlyJuly 1863
