First article on underwater photography in English?

[eskimo3883]

First article on underwater photography in English?

I am not clear when the first publication of underwater photos occurred. As I understand things a Briton named William Thompson took the first underwater photos in 1856 in Weymouth Bay from the surface using a camera attached to a pole. Louis Boutan took the first underwater photos while diving using a surface supplied hard hat diving gear in 1893. His photos were shown during the 1900 international congress of the photography on the world-exhibition in Paris, and his book "La Photographie Sous- Marine et les Progrès de la Photographie", Schleicher Frères, Paris was published in 1900. This book is in French, tends to sell for between $500 to $1000 USD, and is not commonly available anywhere.

There was a French publication even before this book ( "Mémoire sur la Photographie Sous- Marine" - Arch.de Zool.Exp. et Gén., 3ème sér., 1 : 281-324, 1893) and another in 1898 "L'instantané dans la Photographie Sous- Marine", 1898. I have never seen either. The first publication in English I am aware of was also in 1898 with the title “Submarine Photography” in the 1898 edition of New Century Magazine, Vol 56 (new series vol 34), May 1898-Oct, 1898, pp 42-49. This article contains notes on his experiences including and 6 photos. Exposure times were very long in these days and in the article he points out he discovered he needed to use color filters to deal with the new spectrum of underwater light. Prices vary quite a bit on these old prints as some sellers think they have their hands on the mother load. I was able to purchase a bound collection containing this magazine for about $20.00. Recently some one on Ebay chose to cut up an edition and I recently purchased another loose copy for ~$10.00. If you want a free copy of this article you can go to the web site of the Cornell University Library. The digitally scanned photos on-line are not quite the quality printed in the article but it is worth taking a look.

Use the following link:

http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/ ... 287-0056-9

[capn_tucker]

Pretty neat, diver underwater photos from 1893. Gotta love that hand-cranked air compressor..

[eskimo3883]

This is a link to a British HDS article on "William Thompson – The World's First Underwater Photographer" by Nick Baker as
reproduced from Historical Diving Times Issue 19 (Summer 1997).

http://www.thehds.com/publications/thompson.html

Great article. Sorry to say photos are not on the web page. I am not clear the status on reprints. For what ever reason I have yet been able to get a response from HDS-UK on any reprint.