Photographic Researches and Manipulations, Including the Author's Former Treatise on Daguerreotype.
Lexington: Holman & Gray, 1851. Hardcover. 12mo. Quarter black calf with compartments and gilt lettering and marbled paper over boards. iv, 200pp. Very good. Tight-hinged and fully handleable, though mildly edgeworn and with marbled boards rubbed; text block lightly age toned and occasionally foxed; contemporary ownership signature on front pastedown, same on inner flyleaf and pencilled at top of title page; ca. 1900 bookplate on front pastedown. Item #42845
First of this edition, tight and fairly nice, being a revised edition of his 1850 "Treatise on Daguerreotype." In 1851, upstate New York minister Levi L. Hill (1816-65) caused controversy when he claimed to have developed a process to create color photographs, which he called "heliochromes" (and which soon became personalized to "Hillotypes"). It wasn't until 1856 that Hill published his "Treatise on Heliochromy" to explain the process, but a daguerreotypist got the book banned on grounds of libel and all but a few were pulped. Hill's process was long discredited, then forgotten, although recent scientific tests show that his convoluted process works somewhat. A decent copy of this rarity. A second edition, revised and enlarged, was issued in 1854 by Myron Shew in Philadelphia, and this later edition too is extremely scarce.
Price: $3,500.00