can you stretch emulsion?
Toronto. Good friend, PHSC member, and photographic historian George Dunbar shared this bit of whimsey with me. The February 1928 issue of “Science and Invention” included an article titled, “Enlarging Photos by Stretching” attributed to an “A W Herbert”.
Herbert posits that a formula developed by “Dr A Junghahn” of Berlin can separate the emulsion from its glass plate support and make it stretchable. Later, using a water bath the emulsion is stretched and moved to a larger glass plate. Depending on the emulsion thickness and the water bath temperature, he quotes Junghahn as saying the emulsion can be stretched up to 10x saving the aspect ratio and eliminating need for an enlarger. The formula like the doctor cannot be located.
This may be wishful thinking on the part of A W Herbert. A Doctor Alfred Junghahn did exist in Berlin as an assistant to Vogel but the only reference I could find was a paper that referenced an “Alfred Junghaun”as an assistant to Vogel. For a modest $44 US I could get a pdf copy of the paper.
The only photographic media I am aware of that purposely had the emulsion removed for printing was Eastman’s stripping film. This was the earliest film for a Kodak camera. It used an optically impure backing material so the emulsion was “stripped” and placed on a glass table for contact printing. There was never a mention of “stretching” to enlarge the image.
I haven’t seen any other reference to this idea. It is telling that the formula is incomplete in the article. Such magazines depended on these fillers to attract readers so they could attract advertisers. If you have any ideas just send me a note at info@phsc.ca. For this post I checked out Google, Eder’s 1905 edition, and Jenkins’s “Images and Enterprise”.
