On March 29th, 1878, Mr. Charles Bennett published his method of increasing the sensitiveness of gelatino-bromide plates. It may be briefly described as a prolonged cooking of the gelatine emulsion at a temperature of 90°, and, according to Mr. Bennett's experience, the longer it was cooked the more sensitive it became, with a corresponding reduction of density when the prepared plates were exposed and developed.
April 20th of this year Mr. J. A. Spencer died, after a lingering illness, of cancer in the throat. Mr. Spencer was, at one period in the history of photography, the largest manufacturer of albumenized paper in this country, and carried on his business at Shepherd's Bush. In 1866 he told me that he broke about 2,000 eggs daily, merely to obtain the whites or albumen. The yolks being of no use to him, he sold them, when he could, to glove makers, leather dressers, and confectioners, but they could not consume all he offered for sale, and he buried the rest in his garden until his neighbours complained of the nuisance, so that it became ultimately a very difficult thing for him to dispose of his waste yolks in any manner. After the introduction of Swan's improved carbon process, he turned his attention to the manufacture of carbon tissue, and in a short time he became one of the partners in the Autotype Company, and the name of the firm at that period was Spencer, Sawyer, and Bird; but he ceased to be a partner some time before his death.
At the South London Technical Meeting, held in the great hall of the Society of Arts, I exhibited my non-actinic developing tray, and developed a gelatine dry plate in the full blaze of gas-light. A short extract from a leader in the _Photographic News_ of November 14th, 1879, will be sufficient to satisfy all who are interested in the matter. "Amongst the many ingenious appliances exhibited at the recent South London meeting, none excited greater interest than the developing tray of Mr. Werge, in which he developed in the full gas-light of the room a gelatine plate which had been exposed in the morning, and exhibited to the meeting the result in a clean transparency, without fog, or any trace of the abnormal action of light.... We can here simply record the fact, interesting to many, that the demonstration before the South London meeting was a perfect success."
