I did an advanced (their terminology not mine) search using the following
string. The caps were not required in the original. This was cut and
pasted from the patent site report and it provided the caps. The ttl just
means title and the / is just a parser help the site uses.
I asked it for titles that had any word that starts with photo and
also any work that starts with sensiti. The * is just a logical wildcard.
The andnot silver part was to cut some 1900 returns down a bit. The andnot
has to be one word as far as I can tell.
The online data base only goes back to 1976 but the search had 835 hits.
The other request for the 1852 patent turned up empty. Not in the database
obviously. Patent copies are US $3 each. Not bad.
Someone who actually knows some photochemistry will have to look at the
abstracts which is all that the search returns to see if any of it is actually
useful for alt processes. It is mostly out of my area of knowledge. Now if you
want to know about 1960 ish technology for knocking satellites out of orbit that
is another story. You will need an appropriate 1960 security clearance however.
TTL/photo* AND TTL/sensiti*) ANDNOT TTL/silver
An interesting site to play on but the IBM patent site has some pictures and I
think more of the abstracts. http://www.patents.ibm.com/
Hope this helps.
Gene Robkin