Background
John Carbutt was born to mason Robert Carbutt and his wife Ann on December 2, 1832 in Sheffield, United Kingdom.
inventor Photographer photographic entrepreneur stereo card publisher
John Carbutt was born to mason Robert Carbutt and his wife Ann on December 2, 1832 in Sheffield, United Kingdom.
John Carbutt emigrated to the United States in 1853, settling in Chicago. John`s career in photography began when he photographed Canada's Grand Trunk Railway from 1853 to 1859. He established American Photo-Relief Printing Co. in Philadelphia, the city where he remained throughout his life. He began producing gelatin dry plates and, in 1879, established the first commercially successful factory for the plates in America.
John Carbutt also produced plates with positive emulsions for use as transparencies and lantern slides, and is chiefly credited with establishing the standard American size of З x 4 for lantern slides. In 1888 he began selling celluloid cut films; the first film strips Thomas Edison used for his Kinetoscope were obtained from Carbutt. The manufacturer also pioneered production of orthochromatic plates and filters, including those used in 1893 to cut haze in aerial photography, and produced plates for graphic arts and X-rays (1896). Finally he introduced cemented glass filters in 1897.
John Carbutt spent his later years experimenting with color photography and developed color screens for process engraving. He also indulged in his lifelong love of landscape photography. In addition, Mr. Carbutt served as a consultant to several organizations, most notably the Franklin Institute and the Philadelphia Photographic Society, that frequently sought his technical expertise.
Buffalo Indian chief
(People looking at a buffalo on an unidentified street)
Michigan Avenue, from Jackson Street
View in the Jackson Iron Mine
Group of Pawnee warrs. (warriors) & palace cars of U.P.R.R
Group of Indians and mud lodge in Pawnee village
Crosby’s Opera House
Interior Section of Chicago Lake Tunnel
1865River Scene, looking North from Madison St. Bridge, Chicago
1865Wabash Av. From Washington St. North, Chicago
1865Interior, Western News Co Store, State Street, Chicago
1865Joseph Russell Jones
1868Charles N. Holden
1868George Robe Quinn
1868Presbyterian Church of Frankford, As It Was
1872Presbyterian Church of Frankford, As It Is
1872Interior, U.S. Patent Office
1880Bottle
1880Westward, the monarch capital makes its way
1866The Platte River and Kinsley’s Brigade
1866The directors of the U.P.R.R. at the 100th Mer.
John Carbutt, self-portrait
1865Beginning in the 1870s John Carbutt became the president of professional photographic organisations including the Photographic Society of Philadelphia (1875), the Photographers Association of America (a group that superseded the National Photographers Association in 1880) and the Dry Plate Manufacturing Association (1884).