Background
Walter Bentley Woodbury was born on June 26, 1834, in Manchester, United Kingdom.
1860
1870
Walter Bentley Woodbury was born on June 26, 1834, in Manchester, United Kingdom.
In 1851 Walter Woodbury, who had already become a professional photographer, went to Australia and soon found work in the engineering department of the Melbourne waterworks. He worked at odd jobs for several years, eventually becoming a draftsman in the engineering department of the Melbourne waterworks. He started using a second-hand camera he had bought, photographing the construction of the waterworks and other buildings in the city.
Walter Woodbury then moved to Java, doing much photography there, and returned to England in 1859. The next year he went back to Java and established a photographic business for a few years until ill health forced his return to England once again.
Walter Woodbury then put his efforts into photomechanical inventions. Woodbury's most famous invention (1864) was the Woodburytype, a continuous-tone carbon photomechanical printing process that allowed low-cost, permanent reproductions. In the next twenty years, he continued to improve the process, which was used extensively for book illustrations during the rest of the nineteenth century. His other inventions included the camera for use in unmanned balloons, transparencies and special photographs, sensitized films, and improvements in optical lanterns and stereoscopes.
Between 1864 and 1885 Walter Woodbury took out more than 30 patents in Britain and abroad for inventions relating to balloon photography, transparencies, sensitized films, and improvements in optical lanterns and stereoscopy.
