Background
Frederick Charles Luther Wratten was born in 1840 in the United Kingdom.
Frederick Charles Luther Wratten was born in 1840 in the United Kingdom.
Starting his career as a schoolteacher and organist, he moved to London at age twenty-one to become a clerk in the photographic and optical warehouse of Joseph Solomon.
Stimulated to begin his own experiments by news of the discovery of gelatin as an emulsion for sensitization, Frederick Wratten invented the use of alcohol in drying gelatin emulsion and removing unwanted silver nitrate (1876). In 1877, with Henry Wainwnght, he formed Wratten & Wainwnght in order to manufacture and sell photographic supplies for the collodion and new gelatin dry processes. One of the first firms in England to offer commercially successful dry plates, Wratten & Wainwnght is also credited with introducing the process of "noodlmg'' gelatin emulsions before washing (1878).
Frederick Wratten continued the business after Wainwright's death in 1892. In 1906 S.H. Wratten, his son, and C.E. Kenneth Mees joined the business; together they soon introduced the first English panchromatic plates and filters. In 1907 Mees and the company patented a color-screen process. The company was sold to George Eastman in 1912 and Wratten joined Kodak Ltd. in Harrow, where the manufacturing processes were transferred.