From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 08/19/03-11:33:54 PM Z
Chris, you're going to love this -- remember the Mr. Wille from the 1908
BJP Almanac you said did the same GPR test that Anderson did ? To my
great regret, I don't have that volume, tho when I get my digital camera
I'm going to go shoot it at the NY Public library. (There's nothing so
interesting in 1909, which is the only one I have from that period... and
gum seems to have fallen off fairly quickly.)
BUT -- your info stuck in mind, and something else rang a tiny bell. I
checked the Paul Anderson monograph again and BINGO ! He was born in 1880,
it says, and entered photography at the age of 27, after having been an
electrical engineer. That is, he entered photography in 1907 and we may
assume studied the British Journal of Photography Almanac, how could he
not? And there the very next year was the "system" of Mr. Wille, which he
simply adopted -- and, perhaps the way of an engineer, over-elaborated for
its THEORY without testing in practice.
Showing, of course, exactly the kind of plagiarism I've been talking
about. An "author" takes someone else's material, doesn't test it, maybe
doesn't even do it, but may well ELABORATE it and then peddles it as his
own...
In this case a combination of zeitgeist and timing (gum had died & was
revived by newbies looking for "the" answers) brought on a chain, a
positive avalanche of gum-pigment-ratio testing, in fact in the revival a
manual that didn't have it was hardly worthy of the name.... And, as
noted, when I dared say "baloney," I was pilloried in these very
precincts.
Of course that kind of fallacy occurs not just in alt photo.... even in
fields like medicine, astronomy, physics, et al, bad "science" may rest
undisturbed for decades. Tho lately in medicine, where rich american's
health is at issue, actual science that involves actual testing has gotten
quite common. Whereupon we read in the NY Times Tuesday Science section of
this or that shibboleth finally disproved -- with often a footnote about
some early dissident previously dismissed as a crank.
What we probably don't know is where Wille got it... I don't suppose he
gives a credit or citation ??? That was very rare at the time... entire
articles were often reprinted without giving the source. Tho Wille may
have thought it up himself... Imagine !!!
tra la,
Judy
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