Originally Posted by
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.
Bookmarks