Archival Photographs
Dear Stan Grayson,
Congratulations on your recent article (WB No. 302) about the photographer J.S. Johnston. I’d like to offer a little detail that you may not have been aware of: Johnston had at least two photography-related patents. One, from October 1886, is for a camera that allowed rapid changing of film plates and directly explains some of his amazing photos.
The other, from August 1898, is for an improvement in developing films. In that later patent application he described himself as a citizen of Great Britain and a resident of New York City. The 1880 U.S. Census described him as having been born in 1849 in England. For a while, early in his career (at least in 1885), he conducted business as Johnston & Miller in partnership with C. Miller.