Pretsch, Paul

SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing, Photography, film and optics

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b. 1808 Vienna, Austria

d. 1873 Vienna, Austria

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Austrian printer and inventor of photogalvanography, one of the earliest commercial photomechanical printing processes.

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The son of a goldsmith, Pretsch learned the printing trade in Vienna, where he worked until 1831. He then took up a series of posts in Germany, Belgium and Holland before returning to Vienna, where in 1842 he joined the Imperial State Printing Office. The office was equipped with a photographic studio, and Pretsch was encouraged to explore applications of photography to printing and the graphic arts. In 1851 he was sent to London to take responsibility for the Austrian printing exhibits of the Great Exhibition. This event proved to be a significant international show case for photography and Pretsch saw a great number of recent innovations and made many useful contacts. On returning to Vienna, he began to develop a process for producing printing plates from photographs. Using Talbot's discovery that bichromated gelatine swells in water after exposure to light, he electrotyped the relief image obtained. In 1854 Pretsch resigned from his post in Vienna and travelled back to London, where he patented his process, calling it photogalvanography. He went on to form a business, the Photo-Galvano-Graphic Company, to print and market his pictures.

The Photographic Manager of the company was the celebrated photographer Roger Fenton, recently returned from his exploits on the battlefields of the Crimea. In 1856 the company issued a large serial work, Photographic Art Treasures, illustrated with Pretsch's pictures, which created considerable interest. The venture did not prove a commercial success, however, and although further plates were made and issued, Fenton found other interests to pursue and Pretsch was left to try to apply some of his ideas to lithography. This too had no successful outcome, and in 1863 Pretsch returned to Vienna. He was reappointed to a post at the Imperial State Printing Office, but his health failed and he made no further progress with his processes.

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Bibliography

9 November 1854, British patent no. 2,373. 11 August 1855, British patent no. 1,824.

Further Reading

J.M.Eder, 1945, History of Photography, trans. E. Epstean, New York.

H.Gernsheim and A.Gernsheim, 1969, The History of Photography, rev. edn, London. H.J.P.Arnold, 1977, William Henry Fox Talbot, London (an account of the relationship with Talbot's process).

JW