Sensitization

The articles listed in this section deal with the means by which albumen prints are rendered light sensitive. Typically, the process involved floating the sheet of albumen paper on a bath of silver nitrate whereupon the silver nitrate would react with a salt in the albumen (often sodium chloride or ammonium chloride) to form the light sensitive silver chloride. A fair amount of experimentation in the middle of the 19th Century revolved around the use of halides other than chlorine such as bromine and iodine. John Towler explains this work in lucid detail. Less lucid but no less valuable, are the articles by George Price from the Photographic News that deal with the physical and chemical changes that of albumen induced by contact with the sensitization bath.