Glass plate negatives ... when did they stop being used?

[Keith]

The reason I ask is because I was given a couple the other day by a friend who previously gave me a box of old 127 negs to scan a few months ago.

These are small, about 10.5 by 8.0 centimeters and in pretty decent condition. One is of a couple of very young children and the other is of a gramaphone stroboscope of all things. The thing that puzzles me is the stroboscope image is actually a photo of the device you put on a turntable to adjust your speeds and it appears to be dated from the fifties which doesn't quite make sense to me ... why would a negative image be on glass from this time period?

They both belonged to her gandfather and she knows nothing of their history.


This is the shot of the children and up in the top right corner there appears to be a symbol or logo of some type.

I scanned the logo on it's own to get a better look and it has a patent number on it ... 115827 and the name KOALA

Heres the shot of the gramaphone strobe and it's shown date ... there also appears to be the same logo in the centre.

I love a good mystery ... can anyone throw any light on this?

 

[ChipMcD]

I think glass plate negatives were available in 4x5, at least, until quite recently. I remember seeing the curator of a local small observatory buying 4x5 glass plates of T-Max 100 in the late 80's or early 90's for the telescope. It certainly would solve negative flatness problems, at the obvious cost of fragility.

 

[B.J.Scharp]

An early version of a thumbtack perhaps?

First image appears to be a picture of a picture (notice the white border and scratches)

 

[Keith]

An early version of a thumbtack perhaps?

First image appears to be a picture of a picture (notice the white border and scratches)

Thumbtacks ... I think you're right and when I look more closely I think you're definitely right. Why didn't I think of that? 😛

The pic of the kids appears to have a reflection on the surface (of a print) also!

 

[ChrisN]

Thumbtacks ... I think you're right and when I look more closely I think you're definitely right. Why didn't I think of that? 😛 ...

There's one in the centre of the stroboscope, too.

 

[Keith]

I was quite impressed with how well the V700 scanned the image of the stroboscope! Placing the glass negative emulsion side down on the scanner glass with the scan area mask in place gave a very sharp scan.

Looking at those now they are definitely thumb tacks ... talk about not seeing the obvious! 😛

 

[sepiareverb]

I've got a Kodak Catalog from 2001 which lists 10 glass plates available, TMAX 100 and Tech Pan among them. I'd guess they were still in somewhat regular use through the early 50's here in the US judging by what ones I've seen for sale in antique shops around here.

 

[wilt]

Yep, for technical uses, mostly in astronomy, they were used until quite recently, at least throughout the 1990's. Kodak even hade special emulsions for astronomy, such as 103a-0.