L&H Wulff Petzval lens

[Laurent Laval]

Hello, I'm looking for some info / catalog / listing of the L & H Wulff lenses

A french lens maker or seller established 57 rue Charlot in Paris.
I have one lens with rack and pignon and a disc system diaphragm that you have to insert inside the lens after unscrewing the rear group. not very convenient :-)
serial 3171 about 200mm f3.5

[Laurent Laval]

Woa ! nobody has info about this lens maker ? ?

[Ron (Netherlands)]

Guess he was a seller (and not producer) of equipment (and put on his name on some of the sold equipment), and he was according to some sources 'Daguerreotypist'... (address list 1854)

Other sources mention:

"pannotype photographic process was presented for the first time in 1853, to the French Academy of Sciences by the firm of Wulff & Co"

"The Pannotype, from the Latin word “pannos” meaning cloth, is a rare early photographic process in which a collodion image was made on glass but physically transferred onto black oil cloth, patent leather, or black enameled paper. It was thought that they would be more durable since they could not break like ambrotypes, nor could they be easily scratched like daguerreotypes or bent like tintypes. The process is usually attributed to Léon and Henri Wulff, owners of the French company Wulff & Cie., but it was invented in 1852 by Jean Nicolas Truchelut (1811-1890), a pupil of Louis Daguerre and an itinerant daguerreotypist who approached the Wulff brothers in 1853 seeking help improving his invention and a way to market it. Trucelut never patented the process and when he fell out with the Wolff’s they submitted it themselves it the French Academy of Sciences, coined the term “pannotype” and began selling instructions along with ready-to-use pre-coated fabric. It was soon being used across the Atlantic, but Americans preferred leather as the support medium. Though widely advertised by photographers on both continents, its life was short - the picture base desiccated rapidly, the emulsion cracked and the pictures deteriorated. Surviving pannotypes are rare today."

[Laurent Laval]

Thank you Ron for these explanations and this little summary of the beginnings of photography, I learned a lot of things.