Background
Hannibal Williston Goodwin was born on April 21, 1822, in Taughannock on the shores of Lake Cayuga, in Tompkins County, New York. He was the son of George and Cynthia Williston (Gregory) Goodwin.
Hannibal Williston Goodwin was born on April 21, 1822, in Taughannock on the shores of Lake Cayuga, in Tompkins County, New York. He was the son of George and Cynthia Williston (Gregory) Goodwin.
After attending the district schools, Goodwin entered Union College in Schenectady, New York, and graduated in 1848. The succeeding autumn, he matriculated in the Yale Law School at New Haven, Connecticut, but within a few months gave up this study and entered the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City.
He was graduated from this institution in 1851, and following his ordination was appointed rector of Christ Church at Bordentown, New Jersey.
In 1854, Goodwin accepted a call to St. Paul’s Church, Newark, New Jersey, and for the succeeding five years served this parish. From there he went to Trenton, New Jersey, and organized Trinity Parish, but after a year he was required to relinquish the work because of illness.
Hopeful of regaining his health, he moved with his family to San Francisco, California, in 1860, and for seven years resided there, serving as rector of Grace Church. The California climate proved very beneficial.
By 1867, Goodwin had so fully recovered that he returned to the East, again settled in Newark, and accepted the rectorship of the House of Prayer.
For the next twenty years, he conducted this office faithfully and arduously, but because of rather delicate health, he gave it up upon reaching the retirement age of sixty-five years.
For the remainder of his life, he had no active charge.
While rector of the House of Prayer, he secured a stereopticon outfit but found that to have suitable illustrations he would have to make them himself. This led him to take up the study of photography and eventually to undertake experiments, in a small way, in order to find a substitute for glass upon which to make photographic negatives.
The idea was not original with him, nor was he a technician, but his interest was aroused, and by working diligently for upwards of ten years he developed a process and product and applied for a patent for a “Photographic Pellicle” on May 2, 1887.
A little later Henry M. Reichenbach of the Eastman Dry Plate Company applied for and on December 10, 1889, received patent no. 417, 202 for the “manufacture of flexible photographic films. ”
The Patent Office thereupon declared an interference between the two patentees and a bitter fight was precipitated. Goodwin had little difficulty in proving that he was the original inventor of the celluloid photographic film, but he was involved in over twelve years of expensive litigation to break down the Dry Plate Company’s efforts to prevent the issuance of a patent.
He eventually obtained patent no. 610, 861 on September 13, 1898, a little over two years before his death.
He died as a result of a fractured leg and attendant shock and was survived by his wife Rebecca and two children.
Goodwin had always been an ardent advocate of the religious education of the young through the use of pictorial illustrations of Scriptural events.
Goodwin was married to Rebecca Estella Allen.