John Carbutt (1832–1905) was a photographic pioneer, stereo card publisher, and photographic entrepreneur. He came to be the first to use

celluloid Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporar ...

for photographic film and to market dry-plate glass negatives. He was born in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

, England on 2 December 1832. He moved to Chicago in 1853. In 1866, as the official photographer for the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

, he produced the series of stereographic cards titled ''Rail Road Excursion to the 100th Meridian.'' The series celebrated the crossing of the border between the western and eastern United States in October 1866 during the construction of the

transcontinental railroad A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single ...

.Micah Messenheimer
Camera and Locomotive: Two Tracks Across the Continent
''Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division'' Carbutt founded the

Keystone Dry Plate Works The Keystone Dry Plate and Film Works was founded by John Carbutt in 1879 in Philadelphia, and its 113 Berkley Street location was constructed in Germantown in 1884. The factory became the location for his pioneering work in new photographic tec ...

in 1879 and was the first to develop sheets of

coated with

photographic emulsion Photographic emulsion is a light-sensitive colloid used in film-based photography. Most commonly, in silver-gelatin photography, it consists of silver halide crystals dispersed in gelatin. The emulsion is usually coated onto a substrate of g ...

for making celluloid film in 1888. Carbutt sliced thin plates from a rigid celluloid block, and then coated them with a silver gelatin emulsion to make a Celluloid Dry plate. Around 1890 he made them in a 35 mm width for

William Kennedy Dickson William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a British people, British inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison. Early life William Kennedy Dickson was born on 3 ...

Kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an precursors of film, early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic ...

, which set the

35 mm film 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format commonly referred to as 35 mm film * 35 mm movie film 35 mm film is a film gauge used in filmmaking, and the film standard. In motion pictures that record on f ...

standard for

motion picture camera A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either on an image sensor or onto film stock, in order to produce a moving image to project onto a movie sc ...

s and still

camera A camera is an Optics, optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), ...

s. That image format is one of the dominant formats to this day, as the majority of high end

digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile device ...

s use a 35mm frame-sized sensor and 35mm film is still being used by some photographers and film makers. Carbutt is interred at

West Laurel Hill Cemetery West Laurel Hill Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1869, is 200 acres in size and contains the burials of many notable people. It is affiliated with Laurel Hill Cemetery in neighboring Ph ...

Bala Cynwyd Bala Cynwyd ( ) is a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route 1 (City Avenue). It was originally two separa ...

, Pennsylvania.

References

External links

* 19th-century American inventors Cinema pioneers Pioneers of photography 1832 births 1905 deaths History of film Photographers from Illinois Businesspeople from Chicago English emigrants to the United States People from Sheffield 19th-century American photographers 19th-century American scientists Burials at West Laurel Hill Cemetery {{Photographer-stub

See also

References

External links