Background
Leon Warnerke was born on 26 May 1827 or 1837to a Polish-Lithuanian szlachta family in manor Macie, Grodno Governorate, Lithuania, Russian Empire (today Macie, Brest region, Belarus).
inventor Photographer civil engineer
Leon Warnerke was born on 26 May 1827 or 1837to a Polish-Lithuanian szlachta family in manor Macie, Grodno Governorate, Lithuania, Russian Empire (today Macie, Brest region, Belarus).
Leon Warnerke graduated from the Corps of Railroad Engineers in 1859.
Leon Warnerke left Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1870 for London, where he started a photochemical company.
Having invented a film-roll holder in 1875, Leon Warnerke also experimented with the production of silver bromide collodion emulsion, producing silver bromide films on gelatinized paper and becoming the first to use "stripping films" with a roller dark-slide. In 1889 Leon Warnerke produced gelatin silver chloride paper, calling it "the printing process of the future."
Leon Warnerke devised the sensitometer in 1880 - the first practical device for measuring exposures - and in 1885 introduced and patented a negative paper coated on both sides.
Leon Warnerke lectured frequently before the photographic societies of England, France, Belgium, and Germany. He returned to Saint Petersburg and founded a photographic firm there in 1880 as well as a technical journal, then retired to Geneva around 1898-1899.