The Keystone Dry Plate and Film Works was founded by John Carbutt in 1879 in Philadelphia, and its 113 Berkley Street location was constructed in Germantown in 1884. [1] The factory [2] became the location for his pioneering work in new photographic technologies, including improved glass plate photography, x-ray imaging, the first 35 mm celluloid film, and very early color photography procedures.
Carbutt developed the first gelatine-bromide dry plates (1879), the first orthochromatic dry plates (1886) and the first celluloid dry plates(1888) in this location. He produced the first 35mm film here and sold it to Thomas Edison. In 1888, he introduced the less than a decade-old Edison light bulb to increase productivity in his factory, [3] and in 1896, Carbutt began to manufacture the first x-ray plates for commercial use. [4] In his later years, Carbutt experimented with color photography. [5]
John Carbutt died in 1905. In the early 20th century the factory was bought by Defender Photo Supply, based in Rochester, NY, and became known as the Defender Dry Plate Company. From 1912 to 1977 the building was occupied by Moore Push Pin Company; Edwin Moore invented and patented the push pin, [6] [1] and subsequent occupants included a drug rehab facility. The building forms part of a cluster of 19th-century industrial buildings around Wayne Junction rail station.
In January 2021, Ken Weinstein, the current owner of the property through Wayne Junction Properties/Philly Office Retail, submitted a financial hardship application to the Philadelphia Historical Commission to permit the building to be demolished. [1]
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson was a British-American inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison.
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common present-day uses are for manufacturing table tennis balls, musical instruments, combs, office equipment, fountain pen bodies, and guitar picks.
Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their heyday, a name which has been passed on to their disc-shaped successor, these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. The first cylinders were wrapped with tin foil but the improved version made of wax was created a decade later, after which they were commercialized. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium.
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS was an English physicist, chemist, and inventor. He is known as an independent early developer of a successful incandescent light bulb, and is the person responsible for developing and supplying the first incandescent lights used to illuminate homes and public buildings, including the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1881.
The Junction is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that is near the West Toronto Diamond, a junction of four railway lines in the area. The neighbourhood was previously an independent city called West Toronto, that was also its own federal electoral district until amalgamating with the city of Toronto in 1909. The main intersection of the area is Dundas Street West and Keele Street. The Stockyards is the northeastern quadrant of the neighbourhood.
The American Civil War was the most widely covered conflict of the 19th century. The images would provide posterity with a comprehensive visual record of the war and its leading figures, and make a powerful impression on the populace. Something not generally known by the public is the fact that roughly 70% of the war's documentary photography was captured by the twin lenses of a stereo camera. The American Civil War was the first war in history whose intimate reality would be brought home to the public, not only in newspaper depictions, album cards and cartes-de-visite, but in a popular new 3D format called a "stereograph," "stereocard" or "stereoview." Millions of these cards were produced and purchased by a public eager to experience the nature of warfare in a whole new way.
A drawing pin or [thumb] tack, also called a push-pin, is a short, small pin or nail with a flat, broad head that can be pressed into place with pressure from the thumb, often used for hanging light articles on a wall or noticeboard.
Vulcan Iron Works was the name of several iron foundries in both England and the United States during the Industrial Revolution and, in one case, lasting until the mid-20th century. Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and smithery, was a popular namesake for these foundries.
Wayne Junction station is a SEPTA Regional Rail junction station located at 4481 Wayne Avenue, extending along Windrim Avenue to Germantown Avenue. The station is located in the Nicetown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Wayne Junction serves as a multi-modal transfer point between six of SEPTA's regional rail lines as well as three major transit routes – the Route 75 Trackless Trolley and the Route 23 and 53 bus lines. The station served more than 321,000 riders annually in 2018.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Wayne County, Michigan.
The decade of the 1880s in film involved significant events.
Albert Levy was a French photographer active in Europe and the United States. Most active in the 1880s and 1890s, he was a pioneer of architectural photography.
Thomas Alva Edison and John C. Fareira High School is a high school serving grades 9-12 on 151 West Luzerne Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located at 40.0122°N 75.1291°W) and is part of the School District of Philadelphia.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Detroit, Michigan.
Brown Instrument Company was a U.S. firm known for high-quality instruments and industrial controls.
The United States provided many inventions in the time from the Colonial Period to the Gilded Age, which were achieved by inventors who were either native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States. Copyright protection secures a person's right to his or her first-to-invent claim of the original invention in question, highlighted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, which gives the following enumerated power to the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The Edison Machine Works was a manufacturing company set up to produce dynamos, large electric motors, and other components of the electrical illumination system being built in the 1880s by Thomas A. Edison in New York City. In 1892, its Schenectady, New York plant would become General Electric.
The history of film technology traces the development of techniques for the recording, construction and presentation of motion pictures. When the film medium came about in the 19th century, there already was a centuries old tradition of screening moving images through shadow play and the magic lantern that were very popular with audiences in many parts of the world. Especially the magic lantern influenced much of the projection technology, exhibition practices and cultural implementation of film. Between 1825 and 1840, the relevant technologies of stroboscopic animation, photography and stereoscopy were introduced. For much of the rest of the century, many engineers and inventors tried to combine all these new technologies and the much older technique of projection to create a complete illusion or a complete documentation of reality. Colour photography was usually included in these ambitions and the introduction of the phonograph in 1877 seemed to promise the addition of synchronized sound recordings. Between 1887 and 1894, the first successful short cinematographic presentations were established. The biggest popular breakthrough of the technology came in 1895 with the first projected movies that lasted longer than 10 seconds. During the first years after this breakthrough, most motion pictures lasted about 50 seconds, lacked synchronized sound and natural colour, and were mainly exhibited as novelty attractions. In the first decades of the 20th century, movies grew much longer and the medium quickly developed into one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment. The breakthrough of synchronized sound occurred at the end of the 1920s and that of full color motion picture film in the 1930s. By the start of the 21st century, physical film stock was being replaced with digital film technologies at both ends of the production chain by digital image sensors and projectors.
John Carbutt (1832–1905) was a photographic pioneer, stereo card publisher, and photographic entrepreneur. He came to be the first to use celluloid for photographic film and to market dry-plate glass negatives.
The practice and appreciation of photographyin the United States began in the 19th century, when various advances in the development of photography took place and after daguerreotype photography was introduced in France in 1839. The earliest commercialization of photography was made in the country when Alexander Walcott and John Johnson opened the first commercial portrait gallery in 1840. In 1866, the first color photograph was taken. Only in the 1880s, would photography expand to a mass audience with the first easy-to-use, lightweight Kodak camera, issued by George Eastman and his company.