Background

Frederick Scott Archer was born in 1813, in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. Scott Archer was the son of a butcher from Hertford. He went to London to be an apprenticed to a silversmith.

Career

Frederick Scott Archer began his professional life as a portrait sculptor, experimenting with Talbot's calotype process in order to assist his sculpture. In 1848, he invented the wet-collodion process (also known as Archerotype or Archotype) by which finely detailed glass negatives were produced. Archer also invented the ambrotype; introduced pyrogallic acid as a developer; devised the camera within which plates could be exposed, developed and fixed; came up with a method of whitening collodion positives upon glass, and constructed a triple-lens to shorten the focus of a double combination lens.

Although Fox Talbot and Gustav Le Gray both attempted to sue Archer, claiming he was only a variant of their own inventions, the lawsuits came to nothing. Archer was generally accepted as the inventor of the process by which more than one copy of a picture could be made (its popularity lasted from 1855 to 1880).

Archer also "invented the stripping of collodion films by coating the negative with a rubber solution, which enabled the negative films to be preserved without the glass plate". On August 24, 1855, he patented this process in England.

Achievements

• On his account, a large number of inventions, but the most outstanding and impressive are the wet-collodion process and the stripping of collodion films.
  
  PUBLICATIONS Monograph: Photographic Views of Kenilworth, 1851 (London). Books: Cassell’s Cyclopedia of Photography, 1911, repr. 1973; History of Photography, Josef Maria Eder, 1905, repr. 1972; A History of Photography, Har¬rison, 1888; Manual of the Collodion Photographic Process, 1852, 2nd ed., Collodion Process on Glass, 1854 (London); Photogenic Manipulation, Robert J. Bingham, 1850. Periodicals: British Journal of Photography, Feb 26, 1875; Liverpool and Manchester Photographic Journal, 1857; La Lumière, 1852; Athenaeum, 1851; The Chemist, Mar 1851; Humphrey’s Journal, 1851.
  
  

Personality

Frederick Scott Archer was an English inventor. He invented many different things but the most important was the collodion process. He died impoverished, as since he did not patent the collodion process he made very little money from it.

Quotes from others about the person

• An obituary described him as "a very inconspicuous gentleman, in poor health".

Interests

• photography, sculpture

Connections

Frederick Scott Archer died a poor man, but the government granted an annual pension of £747 to his wife and children.

competitor:

William Henry Fox Talbot

competitor:

Jean-Baptiste Gustav Le Gray

References

• Photogenic Manipulation : Parts I and II The first part takes a look at Camera Obscura, the invention of the camera, and introduces us to some of the very first names in photography. The second part allows us to look at how photography grew into a widely consumed medium, conquering the minds of people everywhere. Also introduces us to some of the big names in photography between 1935 and 1980.
  1854
• THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY
  1875
• Cassell's cyclopedia of photography This book represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself.
  1973