Background
William de Wiveleslie Abney was born on July 24, 1844, in Derby, England. He was the eldest son of Edward Abney (1811–1892), vicar of St Alkmund's Derby, and owner of the Firs Estate.
William de Wiveleslie Abney, English astronomer, chemist, and photographer.
Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney (1843-1920), Photographic scientist and education official.
Cap badge of the Corps of Royal Engineers.
Abney type level, designed by William Abney, 1880, with leather covered case.
Sir William De Wiveleslie Abney, 1843.
Abney was awarded the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (formerly the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath).
Abney was awarded in 1882 Rumford Medal by the Royal Society for his spectroscopic work.
Abney was awarded the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (formerly the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath).
William de Wiveleslie Abney, English astronomer, chemist, and photographer.
Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney (1843-1920), Photographic scientist and education official.
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, England.
Cap badge of the Corps of Royal Engineers.
Abney type level, designed by William Abney, 1880, with leather covered case.
Sir William De Wiveleslie Abney, 1843.
Abney was awarded in 1882 Rumford Medal by the Royal Society for his spectroscopic work.
Abney was awarded the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (formerly the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath).
Richard Keene, 15 May 1825 – December 1894, Derbyshire photographer.
(Researches in colour vision and the trichromatic theory.)
Researches in colour vision and the trichromatic theory.
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(Commissioned in the Royal Engineers (1861), he taught che...)
Commissioned in the Royal Engineers (1861), he taught chemistry and photography at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He succeeded to various educational posts there and elsewhere. In 1874 Abney made the first quantitative measurements of the action of light on photographic materials. In 1880 he discovered the photographic developing properties of hydroquinone.
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(About the Book An experiment is undetaken to support, ref...)
About the Book An experiment is undetaken to support, refute, or validate a hypothesis. Experiments demonstrate what outcome occurs when one factor is manipulated so that the cause and effect may be better deduced. A common feature of experimentation is its reliance on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results. Scientists attempt to set controls that minimize the effects of variables other than the single independent variable, which increases the reliability of the results.
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(An early book on how to make an instantaneous photo, 1895.)
An early book on how to make an instantaneous photo, 1895.
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This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work.
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(The Art and Practice of Silver Printing William de Wivele...)
The Art and Practice of Silver Printing William de Wiveleslie Abney, English astronomer, chemist, and photographer (1843 – 1920).
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This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process.
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Astronomer chemist Photographer
William de Wiveleslie Abney was born on July 24, 1844, in Derby, England. He was the eldest son of Edward Abney (1811–1892), vicar of St Alkmund's Derby, and owner of the Firs Estate.
Abney received his general education from the Rossall School, Lancashire. He then attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.
After Abney graduated from the Royal Military Academy, he served several years with the Royal Engineers in India before being invalided home. In 1869 he was made chemical assistant to the instructor in telegraphy at the Chatham School of Military Engineering, where he was able to pursue a boyhood interest in photography. His first book was Chemistry for Engineers (1870); his second, Instruction in Photography (1871), rapidly became a standard text.
Abney pioneered in the quantitative sensitometry of photographic images: his studies of how negatives blacken in response to varying amounts of incident light (1874, 1882) preceded the “D-log E” curves of F. Hurter and V. C. Driffield in use today. His early work tended to confirm the photochemical law of Robert Bunsen and Sir Henry Roscoe, which stales that intensity of light and the time of exposure to it are reciprocally responsible for the effect produced; but when Julius Scheiner showed, beginning in 1888, that the density of stellar images did not follow this law, Abney was quick to confirm the “failure of reciprocity” in the laboratory, and himself discovered the related intermittency effect (1893).
Abney’s first astronomical publications were reports on an expedition he led to Egypt in December 1874, to photograph a transit of Venus across the face of the sun. In preparation for this expedition Abney—by then a captain—invented a dry photographic emulsion (1874): this, his “albumen beer” process, remained in use for general as well as solar photography until superseded by commercial gelatin products. He went on to study the chemistry of latent image developing (1877) and to introduce hydroquinone (1880), still one of the best developing agents known.
Extending his interests to spectroscopy, Abney was the first to suggest (1877) that stars with rapid axial rotation could be detected by broadened lines in their spectra—an idea later to have wide application. He then devised a red-sensitive emulsion and with it made the first spectroscopic analyses of the structure of organic molecules (1882) and the first photographs of the solar spectrum in the infrared (1887). This was followed by comparative studies of how sunlight is altered in passing through our atmosphere, made at sea level and in the Swiss Alps (1888, 1894).
In 1877 Abney began a long supervisory career with the Board of Education for England and Wales. He was already a member of the Royal Photographic Society (which he served as president in 1892-1894, 1896, and 1903-1905), of the Royal Astronomical Society (president 1893-1895), and of the Physical Society of London (president 1895-1897). He had been made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1876 and was awarded its Rumford Medal in 1882, for his spectroscopic work. He was knighted in 1900.
He died in 1920 in Folkestone, England.
A specialist in the chemistry of photography, William Abney was best known for the development of a photographic emulsion to map the solar spectrum far into the infrared. He was the first photographic investigator to make quantitative measurements of the relation between the transparency of the image and the exposure, according to C. E. K. Mees (Theory of the Photographic Process), and his other discoveries included copper bromide silver nitrate intensification (1877), the use of hydroquinone as a developer (1880) and silver gelatin citrochloride emulsion for printing out paper (known as P.O.P.) (1882). He was also the founder of the Derby Photographic Society in June 1884.
Abney invented the "Abney level", a combined clinometer and spirit level, used by surveyors to measure slopes and angles. He was responsible for the "Abney mounting" of a concave grating spectrograph in which the photographic plate was fixed and the entry slit moved to accommodate different regions of the spectrum.
Abney`s achievements were greatly recognized and he was awarded Rumford Medal by the Royal Society in 1882, for his spectroscopic work, and was knighted in 1900.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(Commissioned in the Royal Engineers (1861), he taught che...)
(The Art and Practice of Silver Printing William de Wivele...)
(About the Book An experiment is undetaken to support, ref...)
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
(An early book on how to make an instantaneous photo, 1895.)
(Researches in colour vision and the trichromatic theory.)
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Abney conducted early research into the field of spectroscopy, developing a red-sensitive emulsion which was used for the infrared spectra of organic molecules. He was also a pioneer in photographing the infrared solar spectrum (1887), as well as researching sunlight in the medium of the atmosphere.
William Abney was a member of the Royal Photographic Society (which he served as president in 1892-1894, 1896, and 1903-1905), of the Royal Astronomical Society (president 1893-1895), and of the Physical Society of London (president 1895-1897). He had been made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1876.
Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney had married twice: firstly Agnes Matilda Smith (died 1888), and secondly Mary Louisa Mead.
Abney`s father had been an early photographic experimenter and friend of Richard Keene, an early Derby photographer.
She was a daughter of Jedediah Strutt of Belper, Co. Derby.
1850–1914
1868–1939
He was a founding member of The Derby Photographic Society in 1884 and the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom in 1886 as well as being an early member of The Linked Ring. Keene became a close friend of William and his brother Charles Edward Abney (1850–1914).
