Archer, Frederick Scott

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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b. 1813 Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, England

d. May 1857 London, England

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English photographer, inventor of the wet-collodion process, the dominant photographic process between 1851 and c.1880.

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Apprenticed to a silversmith in London, Archer's interest in coin design and sculpture led to his taking up photography in 1847. Archer began experiments to improve Talbot's calotype process and by 1848 he was investigating the properties of a newly discovered material, collodion, a solution of gun-cotton in ether. In 1851 Archer published details of a process using collodion on glass plates as a carrier for silver salts. The process combined the virtues of both the calotype and the daguerreotype processes, then widely practised, and soon displaced them from favour. Collodion plates were only sensitive when moist and it was therefore essential to use them immediately after they had been prepared. Popularly known as "wet plate" photography, it became the dominant photographic process for thirty years.

Archer introduced other minor photographic innovations and in 1855 patented a collodion stripping film. He had not patented the wet-plate process, however, and made no financial gain from his photographic work. He died in poverty in 1857, a matter of some embarrassment to his contemporaries. A subscription fund was raised, to which the Government was subsequently persuaded to add an annual pension.

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Bibliography

1851, Chemist (March) (announced Archer's process).

Further Reading

J.Werge, 1890, The Evolution of Photography.

H.Gernsheim and A.Gernsheim, 1969, The History of "Photography", rev. edn, London.

JW