pyro bottle c1851
Toronto. Back in the days of film and glass plates, various chemicals were used as developers including pyrogallic acid. Ev discovered a pretty blue glass bottle that once contained pyrogallic acid. This brought back memories he discusses in issue 17-1 in a column titled, “From My Collection“.
Ev begins, “Today’s users [summer 1991] of proprietary developers probably have never heard of, much less used Pyro developer for their negatives.
“Yet this oldest of developing agents, which dates back to 1851 and which I used until the advent of buffered developers, was the industry standard commonly known as Pyro-soda or Pyro-metol. The latter was of tremendous value with underexposures due to a yellow stain which formed coincident with the silver reduction.
“Finding this rare and beautiful cobalt glass bottle (from about 1870), which contained Pyrogallic acid from Schering’s famous Berlin manufactory, reminded me of the pre-WWI supremacy of Germany in the fine chemical field.”
Ev continued his story of pyro which members read in the printed version of the journal. Today’s members can now read the pdf version on the DVD. This PHSC DVD contains volumes 1-40 of our journal. Each issue is in a searchable pdf format. Join the PHSC today by following either ‘MEMBERSHIP’ above or ‘Membership – Join or Renew’ at the right. Membership is easy and inexpensive. Join camera collectors, photo collectors, photo historians, etc. today! Questions? Email Lilianne at member@phsc.ca.
