The next was Colonel Russell, better known, photographically, as Major Russell. He was born in 1820, and died on May 16th, 1887. He was best known for his tannin process and alkaline developer, with a bromide solution as a restrainer. For a long time his tannin process was very popular among collodion dry plate workers, and very beautiful pictures were taken on Russell's Tannin Plates, but it is many years since they were ruthlessly brushed aside, like all other collodion dry plates, by the now universally employed gelatino-bromide plates or films.
A revival of interest in pinhole photography was awakened this year, and several modes of constructing a pinhole camera were published; but I remember seeing a wonderful picture by a _keyhole_ camera long before I became a photographer. I had called to see an old lady who lived opposite a mill and farm. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and, when I was leaving, I was astonished to see a beautiful picture of the mill and farm on the wall of the hall. "Ah!" said the old lady; "that's my camera-obscura. When the sun shines on the mill at this time of day, I am sure to have a picture of the mill brought through the keyhole." It was something like this that suggested the camera-obscura to Roger Bacon and Baptista Porta. So it is not necessary to have such a small hole to obtain a picture, but it is necessary to have the smallest hole possible to obtain the _sharpest_ picture.
Pizzighelli's visible platinotype printing paper was introduced this year, and I welcomed it as a boon, for the double reasons of its simplicity and permanency. I had been longing for years for such a process, for I, like Roger Fenton, had come to the conclusion that there was no future for photography, in consequence of the instability of silver prints. They would be much more durable than they are if they were only washed in several changes of warm water, but few people will be at the trouble to do that, some because they don't know the efficacy of warm water, and others because it lowers the tone. An eminent photographer once asked me how to render silver prints permanent; but when I told him there was nothing equal to warm water washing, he exclaimed, "Oh! but that spoils the tone." When a photographer sacrifices durability to tone, he is scarcely acting honestly towards his customers. Admitted that there is nothing so beautiful in photography as a good silver print when it has its first bloom on it, neither is there anything so grievously disappointing as a silver print in its last stage of decay. It is quite time that the _durability_ of a photograph should be the first consideration of every photographer, as well as the amateur. Years ago I proposed and published a plan of raising a fund to induce chemists and scientists to consider the subject, but not a single photographer responded by subscribing his guinea.