Lippmann plate

Common card · No. 414134

Lippmann process photography is an early color photography method and type of alternative process photography. It was invented by French scientist Gabriel Lippmann in 1891 and consists of first focusing an image onto a light-sensitive plate, placing the emulsion in contact with a mirror (originally liquid mercury) during the exposure to introduce interference, chemically developing the plate, inverting the plate and painting the glass black, and finally affixing a prism to the emulsion surface. The image is then viewed by illuminating the plate with light. This type of photography became known as interferential photography or interferometric colour photography and the results it produces are sometimes called direct photochromes, interference photochromes, or Lippmann photochromes (distinguished from the earlier so-called "photochromes" which were merely black-and-white photographs painted with color by hand). In French, the method is known as photographie interférentielle and the resulting...

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