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James Glaisher Proposes Using Microphotography for Document Preservation

1851 to 1852
 James Glaisher (left) and Henry Tracey Coxwell Ballooning in 1864

James Glaisher (left) and Henry Tracey Coxwell Ballooning in 1864. (Presumably this photograph was posed when the aeronauts were on the ground, or at least held stationery. In 1864 photo exposures were so slow that the photograph would have shown the slightest motion.)

Impressed by the exhibition of photography at the Great Exhibition of 1851, English meterologist and aeronaut James Glaisher proposed that microphotography be used as a method for document preservation. According to the Wikipedia article on Microform, astronomer and photography pioneer Sir John Herschel supported this view in 1853.

Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations of 1851. Reports by the Juries (1852). Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 331.

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