
photo of a box of Seed’s Dry Plates courtesy of Petapixel
Toronto. The wet-plate process became the primary process in photography for the next few decades until another Englishman, Richard Maddox solved its problems of slow speed, damp cameras, and the need for immediate exposure and processing.
Maddox came up with a dry plate process whereby dry sensitized glass plates could be sold at retail to be later exposed (still on a tripod, but possible to be used hand held in bright sun) and even later processed. A sub-second or ‘instantaneous’ shutter was needed on the camera.
The Maddox process led the way to innovation in America and the gradual use of plastic flexible film (in movies and minicams) in place of glass plates for the century from about 1870 to 1970 when digital technology slowly began to gain ground over film. Today with very fast, full colour, digital cameras and smart phones, innovations like dry plates have disappeared into history.
Note. The title of the post is a riff on a saying attributed to Englishman Oliver Cromwell, “Trust in God and keep your powder dry“.