Running Book Review: D’Agostini/Rose - 19th Century Great Britain & Ireland Lenses.

[Willeica]

According to your book, 25 was f15.81 and 50 was f22.36, so what was scratched here looks right. The 1890 catalogue shows a No 1 size with 4 1/4 x 3 1/4 for landscape and 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 for group or portrait. I have no idea how the lens would have been marked, though. Maybe someone with knowledge might turn up at my talk on Tuesday. A friend of mine who is a professor of optics will advise on the window mounted condenser lens which we found in the darkroom. It may have been for use with a 'solar camera' set up. My friend chairs the judging panel for the annual Frederic Ives Awards for optical research. Later this year he is going to assist me with examining the two Ives Kromskop cameras which are in a collection which I am cataloguing. I am going to give research Zoom talks to PCCGB about both the darkroom and the other camera collection, which goes back to 1854.

William

[pgk]

William,
re Grubb section, basically I did a proof reading with a clean-up on small sections. It sounds like you have enough for a very interesting book on Grubb.
Ivan

Along with William I have been researching into Grubb Photographic lenses and yes we have enough for a book at around 35k words so far. We also have some intrifguing information such as the existence of several 'Patent Doublets' (two Patent lenses arranged around a central stop as Kinglake conjectured Dallmeyer may have tried prior to developning the Rapid Rectilinear) which were manufactured before Dallmeyer's Patent. Of interest may be that Grubb's Washer Stops had apertures which were graduated in 1/8" or 1/16" intervals perhaps because these were readily available drill sizes. Grubb lenses also use Whitworth screw threads suggesting that he was working towards some forms od standardisation even in the 1850s.

Lastly, Grubb short stereo lenses are surprisingly good even on digital cameras as can be seen from this taken on an 1865.

lens.https://www.largeformatphotography.i...attach/jpg.gif

[Ivan Rose]

Re - Grubb Doublets, it is fascinating there are other versions and it would be good to further explore this aspect of Grubb's optical design.
The writer Trail Taylor wrongly linked Grubb's Doublet (symmetrical design) with Thomas Ross's Actinic Doublet (asymmetric design relating to his fathers lens from the 1840s). From the Thomas Bolas account of the Grubb Doublet it gave its best results at smaller apertures. This I have found to be the case with the Ross Doublet SA (standard angle), when testing on 10x8 format, central definition is very high with a gentle fall-off to the edges.

Most books always credit the Rapid Rectilinear to Dallmeyer and Steinheil in 1866. But when you read the Dallmeyer patent it is for ''view-lenses or objectives embracing large angles'', the back element element is larger than the front, only in the small size is it symmetrical. The element design led to a lot of arguments, Thomas Ross claimed the design on behalf of his late father Andrew Ross at one point.
At the Paris exhibition of 1867 Dallmeyer would have been showing the 'Rectilinear' wide-angle, f/16, the debating point could be, did Dallmeyer make the faster 'Rapid Rectilinear' after seeing the Steinheil version. Production of the RR by Dallmeyer started slowly in 1868, I have the 2nd 10x8 size RR produced, that was made in August 1868. You have to think 1869 for a good degree of production of this design.
The introduction of the Rapid Rectilinear led to the demise of both the Grubb and the Ross Doublet lenses.

[Willeica]

Re - Grubb Doublets, it is fascinating there are other versions and it would be good to further explore this aspect of Grubb's optical design.
The writer Trail Taylor wrongly linked Grubb's Doublet (symmetrical design) with Thomas Ross's Actinic Doublet (asymmetric design relating to his fathers lens from the 1840s). From the Thomas Bolas account of the Grubb Doublet it gave its best results at smaller apertures. This I have found to be the case with the Ross Doublet SA (standard angle), when testing on 10x8 format, central definition is very high with a gentle fall-off to the edges.

Most books always credit the Rapid Rectilinear to Dallmeyer and Steinheil in 1866. But when you read the Dallmeyer patent it is for ''view-lenses or objectives embracing large angles'', the back element element is larger than the front, only in the small size is it symmetrical. The element design led to a lot of arguments, Thomas Ross claimed the design on behalf of his late father Andrew Ross at one point.
At the Paris exhibition of 1867 Dallmeyer would have been showing the 'Rectilinear' wide-angle, f/16, the debating point could be, did Dallmeyer make the faster 'Rapid Rectilinear' after seeing the Steinheil version. Production of the RR by Dallmeyer started slowly in 1868, I have the 2nd 10x8 size RR produced, that was made in August 1868. You have to think 1869 for a good degree of production of this design.
The introduction of the Rapid Rectilinear led to the demise of both the Grubb and the Ross Doublet lenses.

Thanks, Ivan. It is not surprising that many designers were trying the same thing at around the same time. Last year at our Leica Society International Conference in Dublin, which I chaired, Peter Karbe, the current head of lens design at Leica, went through the history of compensating elements in photographic lenses by way of leading up to the current very expensive multi-element lenses provided by his employer. What becomes obvious after a while is that various lens design aspects have become part of the language of lens design over time, but this 'translation' also goes back to the very beginning. It would be very difficult, I imagine, to enforce a lens design patent today and I wonder if it was ever easy to do this?

As for the Grubb Doublets, the owner of the darkroom, where I gave a talk last Tuesday, had one with a central diaphragm, but unfortunately it is no longer there. I brought one of mine with a Waterhouse stop set up for demonstration purposes. Those Doublets were being made in the 1880s with the name of Watson (Grubb's London agent) engraved on the barrel. The photographer who owned the darkroom was using his Grubb Doublet as late as 1919, according to his notebooks. He also had Dallmeyer and Watson RRs.

William

[pgk]

Re - Grubb Doublets, it is fascinating there are other versions and it would be good to further explore this aspect of Grubb's optical design.

I have searched extensively but can only find references to six existant Doublet lenses by Thomas Grubb, of which I own two, both made in 1865, from two sereies of serial numbers. Two others are on a stereo camera which may suggest, in the absence of any written documentation, that at least two small 'batches' from 1865 were made and potentially intended for stereo use. Samuel Bourne was apparently given one or two of these lenses but failed to publicise which he used and for what, and as he didn't mark stereo photographs he took, it is very difficult to know what he did with them. As Thomas Grubb was pre-occupied with the Great Melbourne Telescope from 1866 onwards, photographic lenses appear to have taken a very back seat position and supply dwindled although a few were still made. Sir Howard built Doublets too and more of his far more limited production have survived.

[Willeica]

I have searched extensively but can only find references to six existant Doublet lenses by Thomas Grubb, of which I own two, both made in 1865, from two sereies of serial numbers. Two others are on a stereo camera which may suggest, in the absence of any written documentation, that at least two small 'batches' from 1865 were made and potentially intended for stereo use. Samuel Bourne was apparently given one or two of these lenses but failed to publicise which he used and for what, and as he didn't mark stereo photographs he took, it is very difficult to know what he did with them. As Thomas Grubb was pre-occupied with the Great Melbourne Telescope from 1866 onwards, photographic lenses appear to have taken a very back seat position and supply dwindled although a few were still made. Sir Howard built Doublets too and more of his far more limited production have survived.

The lens which I showed at the event last week was an 1880s Aplanatic Doublet by Howard Grubb with Watson markings. I brought that to the event because of the owner of the darkroom seems to have been using one of those lenses with a diaphragm up to about 1920. When doing other research today I came across the following from the book Photography in Ireland - The Nineteenth Century by the late Eddie Chandler. Forty years ago, Eddie was the first person I ever heard talking about Thomas Grubb and Dallmeyer etc. The first piece is about the propensity for rows among people in an industry that was still in short trousers. The second piece is from a correspondent complaining about Dallmeyer exhibiting his products at the Great Dublin Exhibition of 1865 in the Scientific Department rather than the Photographic Department.





William

[Ivan Rose]

William,
thank you, any small insights can help to build a picture of the period. Dallmeyer had a display of telescopes along with his main stand at the 1862 London exhibition. I was lucky in finding a CDV that features the telescope display. Having two stands at Dublin 1865 would have doubled his costs, plus Dallmeyer was also showing at the Berlin International of 1865, both exhibitions gave him a medal. Paris 1867 and Philadelphia 1876 gave a medal for the scientific instruments and a separate medal for for the photographic side, but it would all of been on one stand. There was a debate prior to the 1862 exhibition as to the position of photography, it was decided to give it status as an ''attendant'' to Art rather than a ''companion'', which could suggest it is still seen as ''scientific'' rather than ''artistic''.
The idea that Dallmeyer should ''atone for his mistake'' in not having two stands is amusing. My 'perfect' find would be a photograph of one of these stands for 1862, 1865 or 1867, none seem to exist.

re - the debates on who designed what, I would imagine that Grubb tired of these. Yes it would be difficult patenting in the early days as the number of glass types available was small and the number of ways in which they could be used was also small. Dallmeyer put some genuine 'computation' into his Triple Achromatic, its not just three glasses put together as some assume, French attempts to copy the lens can be poor at full aperture when compared to the Dallmeyer made lenses. H. Dennis Taylor said that his radical new triple design could have been achieved in the 1870s, but it took Taylor's mathematical brain to see what could be achieved even without the new Jens glasses, in fact he was very proud not to be using the Jena glass.

[pgk]

Dallmeyer put some genuine 'computation' into his Triple Achromatic, its not just three glasses put together as some assume.

Thomas Grubb was an early adopter of ray tracing so he too put effort into his designs. His 'portable' mount (pillbox type) still does a credible job of minimising flare, and his son still tried to minimise glass/air interfaces to reduce flare in telescopes. I don't think that many of the early lens designers were computationally illiterate.

[Willeica]

William,
thank you, any small insights can help to build a picture of the period. Dallmeyer had a display of telescopes along with his main stand at the 1862 London exhibition. I was lucky in finding a CDV that features the telescope display. Having two stands at Dublin 1865 would have doubled his costs, plus Dallmeyer was also showing at the Berlin International of 1865, both exhibitions gave him a medal. Paris 1867 and Philadelphia 1876 gave a medal for the scientific instruments and a separate medal for for the photographic side, but it would all of been on one stand. There was a debate prior to the 1862 exhibition as to the position of photography, it was decided to give it status as an ''attendant'' to Art rather than a ''companion'', which could suggest it is still seen as ''scientific'' rather than ''artistic''.
The idea that Dallmeyer should ''atone for his mistake'' in not having two stands is amusing. My 'perfect' find would be a photograph of one of these stands for 1862, 1865 or 1867, none seem to exist.

re - the debates on who designed what, I would imagine that Grubb tired of these. Yes it would be difficult patenting in the early days as the number of glass types available was small and the number of ways in which they could be used was also small. Dallmeyer put some genuine 'computation' into his Triple Achromatic, its not just three glasses put together as some assume, French attempts to copy the lens can be poor at full aperture when compared to the Dallmeyer made lenses. H. Dennis Taylor said that his radical new triple design could have been achieved in the 1870s, but it took Taylor's mathematical brain to see what could be achieved even without the new Jens glasses, in fact he was very proud not to be using the Jena glass.

The piece re Dallmeyer I quoted from was clearly written by a British correspondent who visited Dublin for the Exhibition. There was also a report by Sir John Joscelyn Coghill, the Head of the Photography Department at the 1865 Exhibition, who could be described as Anglo Irish https://roaringwaterjournal.com/2023...celyn-coghill/ . He was a great advocate of photography as an art. He had previously been Chair of the Dublin Photographic Society which became the Photographic Society of Ireland whose collection I am now cataloguing. Below is a photo of the Council of the Dublin Society in 1856 with Coghill in the middle as Chair and to his left (as viewed) with his hands on the table is Thomas Grubb who was the Secretary of the Council. I believe the original of this was an early magic lantern plate, but I have found a copper plate which was used for printing the photo in the centenary book of the society which was published in 1954. I will be going back through the box containing those items again. I will also look out for material relating to the 1865 exhibition in the collection and also in the library of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) where I am a member.





Grubb was remarkable in what he made and achieved, considering that he had a full time job as Chief Engineer of the Bank of Ireland and was also developing an astronomical telescope/observatory business. His early Aplanatic lenses have the highest quality of construction and his few helicoid lenses, such as my No 509, are wonders to handle and behold. The optics, while relatively straightforward by today's standards, were outstanding for their period. People are astonished at the quality of the images I have produced using a Grubb Ax, which was the smallest lens produced by the company. I have a Dallmeyer Triple Achromatic which I must test against the Ax one of these days. Different constructions, I know, but both are from the same 'design period'. The Grubb is a far more solid piece. In fact, In a collection of lenses which covers many different eras and manufacturers, my Grubb items are by far the most solid items, construction-wise, that I own.

William

[Ivan Rose]

William,
there is some very fine work on the J. J. Coghill page, always interesting to see more work from this period.

I totally agree with you on the quality of the Grubb lenses. I have owned several of the Aplanatic lenses in 'Portable' mount, the telescopic mount is a delight to clean so that it operates smoothly. Patent 'D' type No.2915, rigid mount, was in my collection at one time, the micro engraving was a challenge to photograph. The element must have been swapped with its sister lens at some time, 2914/15 must have been a pair.

The 16x12 inch paper negative was made some years ago with a 18 inch 'D' with 3.5 inch element. Using the rising front, the 19 inch diameter image really shows, the lens was intended for 12x10 inch format. I think f/32 was used, the veins of the ivy leaves can be seen over a field of 10 inches wide, see detail image, so most of the 12x10 plate at that aperture would be very sharp. 16x13 inch tailboard camera used with out-of-date bromide paper as a negative material.