[Leica] Enlargers and enlargement goes way back

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

>http://sharlot.org/archives/photographs/19th/book/chapter_11.html<
I thought part of the success  of Leica and 35mm film as still film was the
then viability of enlargement and before that which was the beginning of the
20th century everything was contact printed and that film size was always
print size. Wrong again!
I just found out that enlargement did not come later or way later but was at
in fact at DAY ONE in photography,  1839 with Sir John Herschel who invented
the name "photography".  Writing with light.

I knew from the daybooks E Weston had a solar enlarger for his "mini's"
which were his 5x7 negs he made with his "mini camera".

Anyways read that there were all kinds of light sources they tried for
enlargers other than a hole in the wall.

" Inventors tried every kind of artificial light: candles, lamps burning
kerosene, whale oil, coal gas, and acetylene; battery powered carbon arc
lights; hydrogen?oxygen limelight. The latter consisted of a cylinder of
lime (calcium carbonate), heated in a gas or hydrogen?oxygen flame. It
produced a brilliant white light much superior to the yellow light of
kerosene. It was first used for general illumination in 1826, and in 1841 to
illuminate subjects for calotypes. Some photographers used acetylene thirty
years after Edison invented the electric lamp in 1879, either because their
places of business were not electrified, or simply because they thought the
results were better. Also, early incandescent light bulb filaments were too
large to be placed at the focus of a parabolic reflector to produce a
parallel beam."


-- 
Mark William Rabiner
Photographer
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/