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An Introduction to Photochromes

The Pump Room, Buxton, Derbyshire in 1905 - see the same scene today

The Photochrome process was half photography and half an early form of printing.It produced vivid colour photographs around 50 years before colour photographywas generally available, and allows us to have a glimpse back into the end of the1800s and early 1900's. Typically many of the British ones are around 1905.

The process was around in one form or another for over 50 years, but the colourPhotochromes of most interest to us were produced for between 10-15 years, and

in this time coloured Photochromes were taken throughout the world in largenumbers.

We have made a collection of Photochromes of the whole of the British Islesincluding Ireland, and photographed and edited many of these to produce imagesthat you could not otherwise get without a time machine.

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So far we have identified and obtained copies of around 1,500 covering England,Scotland, Wales and Ireland. We have very many of these as originals, and havebeen able to photograph them and edit the images using Photoshop. Nikon CaptureNX2 does not work so well with these as they are not really photographs but a formof a work of art being reproduced. Our end result is a photograph nearly to today's

standard of a scene over 100 years ago. The next best thing to a time machine.

These can be printed larger than the originals.

A coach trip in the Lake District on the steam ferry

The printable images we produce are very large files, with a number of layers, butwe also have smaller jpegs, that we produced at an earlier stage, before much ofthe editing off our larger files, and these we have made available to you in the

Photo Archive, we have available online. They are organised by county for

England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland with most counties have at least some.

Some we have several originals of, and this has allowed us to better see how theywere produced and the variation to be found between them. We have not included

duplicates in the archive.

http://www.photoarchive.photographers-resource.co.uk/Photochrome/index.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photoarchive.photographers-resource.co.uk/Photochrome/index.htm

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Due to their age some have survived in better condition than others, and while wehave some that an Ambassador had, and have been kept in museum conditions,appearing like new, others can have a lot of marks and need a lot of editing toproduce a good image.

Originals are luckily not expensive, often you will find reproductions selling for

more, making them an attractive area for the collector. This is probably becausemost people do not understand what they are. Few photographic history books

have included them, considering them to be a printing rather than photographicprocess.

Postcard sized Photochromes can be very cheap, and are easy to find and availablein far larger numbers, there are so many of these about that we have notattempted to collect all of them, but do have a small number that we thought werespecifically interesting, but these have not been so far added to our archive.

There are also probably still quite a lot around, the American publishers, DetroitPublishing Company, produced up to 7 million copies in some years. They had

between 10,000 and 30,000 different views available covering the world.Photochrome prints were sold at tourist sites and through mail order catalogues toglobe trotters, armchair travellers, educators, and others to preserve in albums orput on display. Boxes that resemble a decorative bound book were also available tostore large sets of images.

We have a few overseas ones as well, mostly because they are special in some

way, such as multi section editions that produce panoramas and the like. Theoverseas editions we have not added so far to our archive.

There is a story behind many of the images, be it a railway bridge that was laterknocked down when a ship ran into it, local customs of the period or changes in thearea. In addition to this, some we have used as the basis for Then and Now

Photography producing a comparable photo of the same scene today.

Most European Photochromes, including British ones, are 9 by 6.5 inches althoughsome of other sizes, including multiple print width panoramas were produced, and

were on paper sheets that could be produced by the Detroit Photographic Companyin the US and the Photochrom Company of London amongst others. Some versions

were produced larger including some for special book publication,s but these weremostly later, although some used far earlier negatives. Smaller postcards were alsoproduced by the Photochrome process by these and other publishers and thiscontinued until 1970, Monochrome black and white or brown and white prints werealso produced by this method.

The American produced ones also varied in size, with a few much larger, and many

being 3.75 by 7 inches.

Most of the 9x6.5inche Photochromes have a number and title stamped in gold on

the lower left or right corners. Where there is a PZ between the number and titlethese were produced by the Swiss company, standing for Photochrom andPhotoglob Zrich.

A French company also had a process to produce colour images they also calledPhotochrome, but this was a different process.

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Mobile Bathing cubicles at Bognorallowed the ladies having changed to get directly in the Sea

The Process and History

The process invented by a Swiss chemist Hans Jakob Schmid in the 1880's involved

taking photographs in black and white, and making detailed notes on the colourswithin the scene, and then the negative being hand coloured.

Coloured gels (filters) were then used to project the image onto pieces of rock and

the images etched, to produce a stone based printing tablet. Between 4 and 19 ofthese printing tablets (stones) were produced for a single picture and then used

with up to 19 different coloured inks to print the image very tightly registered. Atechnique well advanced for a time when transport was by stage coach and newtechnology was a steam engine.

The chemical process was not complicated, a tablet of lithographic limestone,known as a "litho stone," is coated with a light sensitive coating, comprising of a

thin layer of purified bitumen dissolved in benzene. A reversed half-tone negative isthen pressed against the coating and exposed to daylight for a period of 1030

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minutes in summer, up to several hours in winter. The image on the negativeallows varying amounts of light to fall on different areas of the coating, causing thebitumen to harden and become resistant to normal solvents in proportion to theamount of light that falls on it. The coating is then washed in turpentine solutions toremove the unhardened bitumen and retouched in the tonal scale of the chosen

colour to strengthen or soften the tones as required. Each tint is applied using a

separate stone bearing the appropriate retouched image. The finished print isproduced using usually at least six, but more commonly from 10 to 15, and up to19 tint stones.

If you look at a Photochrome with a magnifying glass then small coloured dotsshowing the grain of the stone used can be seen.

Hans worked for the Swiss company Orell Gessner Fssli, a printing firm with ahistory extending back into the 16th century. Fssli founded the stock company

Photochrom Zrich later renamed to Photoglob as the business vehicle for thecommercial exploitation of this process and both Fssli and Photoglob continue to

exist today. From the mid 1890s the process was licensed by them to other

companies including the two mentioned above, who were really a part of the samebusiness.

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Rail bridge at Sharpness on the River SevernIt was knocked down by a boat and not rebuilt, nothing of the bridge

remains but when the tide is out the boat can be seen in the mud, in thecentre of the river.

Getting your hands on copies

Copies of scans are also available online:-

In our Photo Archive, we think this is the largest collection of imagesrelating to the British Isles and Ireland. As we have it organised by countiesand a map, they are easier to find.

In the USA library of congress public domain section, their search shows

6,431 available online, images are public domain and unmarked, available inmore sizes and includes a choice of large tiffs.

The Zurich central library have digitalised and made available online

3,700 of the 11,000 they have, and although part of their index is in English,and if you put "photochrom" as spelt here in their top search box it bringsthem up. Images have 4 large grey Z's over the image and they claim rightsto these images.

Wikipedia has a collection of nearly a thousand Photochromes online at their

classification Photochrom pictures UK photochromes.

Denver Library has several hundred online. Henry Ford Museum has a multi-slide set show on the Detroit Publishing

Company online. The Curt Teich Postcard Archives, part of the Lake County Discovery

Museum has 365,000 postcards under 2,100 headings, but not all arePhotochromes. The individual cards don't appear to be online,however Illinois Digital Archives has some of their images and on thebottom of the postcard archive page it has links to a few more sources.

In all cases except our archive, I suspect its a mixture of the Photochrome sizes

and Photochrome postcards.

When time permits I intend to produce a comparison listing showing which UKprints are on which resources.

Buying Originals

Antique outlets that sell pictures and maps.

http://www.photoarchive.photographers-resource.co.uk/Photochrome/index.htmhttp://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/pgz/http://opac.nebis.ch/F/XCA6JAUMK2CT3CSRUCBIL4D573B8QITVX3RFMM4SG1D59BIHQV-07844?func=find-b&find_code=WRD&request=photochrom&x=20&y=15&adjacent=Nhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photochrom_pictureshttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:United_Kingdom_on_photochrome_printshttp://photoswest.org:8080/cgi-bin/cw_cgi?resultsScreen+9542+1+10+4http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/dpc/default.asphttp://www.lcfpd.org/teich_archives/http://www.idaillinois.org/http://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.photoarchive.photographers-resource.co.uk/Photochrome/index.htmhttp://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/pgz/http://opac.nebis.ch/F/XCA6JAUMK2CT3CSRUCBIL4D573B8QITVX3RFMM4SG1D59BIHQV-07844?func=find-b&find_code=WRD&request=photochrom&x=20&y=15&adjacent=Nhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photochrom_pictureshttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:United_Kingdom_on_photochrome_printshttp://photoswest.org:8080/cgi-bin/cw_cgi?resultsScreen+9542+1+10+4http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/dpc/default.asphttp://www.lcfpd.org/teich_archives/http://www.idaillinois.org/

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eBay postcard and photographic prints sections.

See also:

Where to Get Old Prints From

How to Photograph Old Prints

Derbyshire Then and Now Locations (the then photos are allPhotochromes)

London traffic at Holborn - you wait for a bus and then two comes along at once!

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Traffic on London Bridge - this London Bridge is now at London Bridge ArizonaUSA

http://www.golakehavasu.com/history-of-london-bridge.html?gclid=CI6w8IHH0qMCFQ1t4wod0l5ewQhttp://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/symbols/key/key.htmhttp://www.golakehavasu.com/history-of-london-bridge.html?gclid=CI6w8IHH0qMCFQ1t4wod0l5ewQ