Wanted -- online information about the Stanley Twins development of the dry plate. Apparently this was the first successful commercial invention which George Eastman bought and saved him when his original process was going down the tubes.
I assume you are already aware that these are the same Stanleys best known for the Stanley Steamer but who werel also hotel operators, violin makers and had several other interests.
I googled Stanley twins and found the brother's second patent. This was No. 345331 of 1886 and covered dry plate machinery. Dry plates themselves had been known for about eight years by then.
The twins were good businessmen. Their sale of the dry-plate business was a major source of money with which to become car makers.
The Stanley plates were well regarded. I think Eastman continued to use the Stanley name for some time after purchasing the business.
Thanks. I guess that eventually I'll have to go to the Stanley Museum in Maine (not a bad prospect except in winter).
I have a more-or-less weekly meeting with my old friend, Dr. Richard Stanley, and over a Bar BQ lunch we solve the world's problems and discuss (argue about) the current state of Automobile racing. He owns (and drives) a fleet of antique sprint cars, while I'm more of a Formula One guy. Dick is a moderately distant relative of the Famous Stanley Twins, and is a twin himself (a genetic characteristic apparently running often in their family).
Also, Chansonetta Stanley Emmons, sister of the more-famous Stanley brothers, was a fine photographer. A book of her photographs (published, I think, in the 1990s) shows only one side of her work. In addition to her better known portrait photographs showing rural life at the beginning of the 20th century, she used a 5x7 camera to photograph formal nature studies and Maine's landscape. Some of her photographs are in the Kingfield, Maine, museum.
The Stanley Twins
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