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M.(ary M.) Somerville, "On the Action of the Rays of the Spectrum on Vegetable Juices. Extract of a Letter from Mrs. M. Somerville to Sir J. F. W. Herschel, Bart., Dated Rome, September 20, 1845, Received 6 November 1845, read 27 November 1845." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 136 (1846), pp. 111 120, 1 illustrated plate. This is the full paper by Somerville, extracted from a larger bound volume. Aside from foxing to the plate, this is a Very Good copy of the paper[++] Somerville experimented on how different colors (wavelengths) of sunlight affect the chemical reactions and color changes of various plant extracts it is very early systemic and quantitative work in photochemistry and is also a very early form of alternative photography. Somerville's work built upon the work in 1816 of Henri August Vogel who discovered that plant juices were sensitive to light). The results produced by Somerville are anthotypes, a type of phtograph like JFW Herschel's "flower photographs" that he reported on in his paper On the Action of the Rays of the Solar Spectrum on Vegetable Colours, and on some new Photographic Processes , in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1842, 132, 181-215.) [++] It appears that the plate that accompanies this paper is one of the earliest engravings appearing in the Philosophical Transactions made after a photographic process of any sort the earliest I can find is in the above-mentioned Herschel paper for 1842. [++] The Somerville image is the result of a photochemical process (photographic images formed in plant dyes by sunlight) aligned in a way to other image-making techniques that are a sort of early "photograph". That is, there is a photo-like image-making photochemical process and a alternative photographic method in the school of photograms and solar printing. [++]Somerville's plant-emulsion photochemistry experiements prepared tinctures of flowers, hosted them on paper, and then exposed them to light/solar spectrum, and then recorded the image-like bleaching of the flower where the light passed through or was blocked.[++] But were these images produced in the experiment "photographs" like the earlier Herschel cyanotypes? Well, not really, but it is within the sphere of the photography world, I'm sure. The image is created solely by the differential fading of a plant pigment under light, but there was no way to "fix" or stop the process from "developing" completely until the images were totally gone.[++] A good, solid overview can be found in a post made by Malin Fabbri, "Did Sir John Herschel or Mrs Mary Somerville discover anthotypes?" on the Alternative Photography website.
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