Our scientific work gave us the opportunity to take a new look and interpretation of the scientific and technological literature on the daguerreotype and to reevaluate its technical history.--from the Preface to the 1999 edition

The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of world photography up to the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets out to be the standard, definitive reference work on the subject for years to come. Its coverage is global – an important ‘first’ in that authorities from all over the world have contributed their expertise and scholarship towards making this a truly comprehensive publication. The Encyclopedia presents new and ground-breaking research alongside accounts of the major established figures in the nineteenth century arena. Coverage includes all the key people, processes, equipment, movements, styles, debates and groupings which helped photography develop from being ‘a solution in search of a problem’ when first invented, to the essential communication tool, creative medium, and recorder of everyday life which it had become by the dawn of the twentieth century. The sheer breadth of coverage in the 1200 essays makes the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography an essential reference source for academics, students, researchers and libraries worldwide.

An exact date for the invention of photography is evasive. Scientists and amateurs alike were working on a variety of photographic processes for much of the early nineteenth century. Thus most historians refer to the year 1839 as the “first” year of photography, not because the sensational new medium was invented then, but because that is the year it was introduced to the world. After more than 175 years, and for the first time in English, First Exposures: Writings from the Beginning of Photography brings together more than 130 primary sources from that very year—1839—subdivided into ten chapters and accompanied by fifty-three images of significant visual and historical importance. This is an astonishing work of discovery, selection, and—thanks to Steffen Siegel’s introductory texts, notes, and afterword—elucidation. The range of material is impressive: not only all the chemical and technological details of the various processes but also contracts, speeches, correspondence of every kind, arguments, parodies, satires, eulogies, denunciations, journals, and even some poems. Revealing through firsthand accounts the competition, the rivalries, and the parallels among the various practitioners and theorists, this book provides an unprecedented way to understand how the early discourse around photographic techniques and processes transcended national boundaries and interconnected across Europe and the United States.

In the first book of its kind, art information expert Lois Swan Jones discusses how to locate visual and textual information on the Internet and how to evaluate and supplement that information with material from other formats--print sources, CD-ROMS, documentary videos, and microfiche sets--to produce excellent research results. The book is divided into three sections: Basic Information Formats; Types of Websites and How to Find Them; and How to Use Web Information. Jones discusses the strengths and limitations of Websites; scholarly and basic information resources are noted; and search strategies for finding pertinent Websites are included. Art Information and the Internet also discusses research methodology for studying art-historical styles, artists working in various media, individual works of art, and non-Western cultures--as well as art education, writing about art, problems of copyright, and issues concerning the buying and selling of art. This title will be periodically updated.

Recent decades have seen a flourishing interest in and speculation about the origins of photography. Spurred by rediscoveries of ‘first’ photographs and proclamations of photography’s death in the digital age, scholars have been rethinking who and what invented the medium. Photography and Its Origins reflects on this interest in photography’s beginnings by reframing it in critical and specifically historiographical terms. How and why do we write about the origins of the medium? Whom or what do we rely on to construct those narratives? What’s at stake in choosing to tell stories of photography’s genesis in one way or another? And what kind of work can those stories do? Edited by Tanya Sheehan and Andrés Mario Zervigón, this collection of 16 original essays, illustrated with 32 colour images, showcases prominent and emerging voices in the field of photography studies. Their research cuts across disciplines and methodologies, shedding new light on old questions about histories and their writing. Photography and Its Origins will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars in art history, visual and media studies, and the history of science and technology.

This book covers all aspects of physical vapor deposition (PVD) process technology from the characterizing and preparing the substrate material, through deposition processing and film characterization, to post-deposition processing. The emphasis of the book is on the aspects of the process flow that are critical to economical deposition of films that can meet the required performance specifications. The book covers subjects seldom treated in the literature: substrate characterization, adhesion, cleaning and the processing. The book also covers the widely discussed subjects of vacuum technology and the fundamentals of individual deposition processes. However, the author uniquely relates these topics to the practical issues that arise in PVD processing, such as contamination control and film growth effects, which are also rarely discussed in the literature. In bringing these subjects together in one book, the reader can understand the interrelationship between various aspects of the film deposition processing and the resulting film properties. The author draws upon his long experience with developing PVD processes and troubleshooting the processes in the manufacturing environment, to provide useful hints for not only avoiding problems, but also for solving problems when they arise. He uses actual experiences, called ""war stories"", to emphasize certain points. Special formatting of the text allows a reader who is already knowledgeable in the subject to scan through a section and find discussions that are of particular interest. The author has tried to make the subject index as useful as possible so that the reader can rapidly go to sections of particular interest. Extensive references allow the reader to pursue subjects in greater detail if desired. The book is intended to be both an introduction for those who are new to the field and a valuable resource to those already in the field. The discussion of transferring technology between R&D and manufacturing provided in Appendix 1, will be of special interest to the manager or engineer responsible for moving a PVD product and process from R&D into production. Appendix 2 has an extensive listing of periodical publications and professional societies that relate to PVD processing. The extensive Glossary of Terms and Acronyms provided in Appendix 3 will be of particular use to students and to those not fully conversant with the terminology of PVD processing or with the English language.

Photography in Japan 1853-1912 is a fascinating visual record of Japanese culture during its metamorphosis from a feudal society to a modern, industrial nation at a time when the art of photography was still in its infancy. The 350 rare and antique photos in this book, most of them published here for the first time, chronicle the introduction of photography in Japan and early Japanese photography. The images are more than just a history of photography in Japan; they are vital in helping to understand the dramatic changes that occurred in Japan during the mid-nineteenth century. These rare Japanese photographs--whether sensational or everyday, intimate or panoramic--document a nation about to abandon its traditional ways and enter the modern era. Taken between 1853 and 1912 by the most important Japanese and foreign photographers working in Japan, this is the first book to document the history of early photography in Japan a comprehensive and systematic way.