French physicist Gabriel Lippmann (1845 - 1921) is the inventor of an early process that yielded the first permanent color photograph. Though his system was too unwieldy to be used commercially at the time, Lippmann was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in physics for his achievement. "Rather than the antiquated photographic process for which he received the Nobel Prize, however, many scientists believe Lippmann's real contributions to science lay in his work with the capillary electrometer and his theoretical papers," noted a "World of Physics"essay on his career.
Born on August 16, 1845, Lippmann was a native of Hollerich, Luxemburg, where his French parents were living at the time. His early education came at home, but when he was 13 years old the family moved to Paris, France, and he enrolled at the Lycée Napoléon. He later studied at Paris's École Normale, where he proved a brilliant student. He eventually found work with the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, summarizing German scientific articles for French publication. He was fascinated by the reports coming in about discoveries in electricity from France's neighbor to the east. In 1873, he took part in a scientific mission to Heidelberg, Germany, and took a post there in the laboratory of physicist Gustav Kirchhoff.
Patented Several Inventions
Lippmann found another mentor in Heidelberg in Wilhelm Kühne, a professor of physiology. Kühne demonstrated to Lippmann an experiment using a drop of mercury, which had been covered with diluted sulfuric acid. The mercury behaved oddly when touched with a piece of iron wire, balling up but then recovering its original shape when the wire was taken away. Lippmann devised a theory for this phenomenon, surmising that the wire had altered an electrical current between the acid and the mercury, which caused it to contract. He was granted permission to conduct experiments in Kirchhoff's laboratory on this, and his ideas were published in 1873.
From those experiments Lippmann went on to devise his first invention of significance, an early voltometer called the capillary electrometer. Its narrow tube, or "capillary," was placed at a horizontal angle, and held mercury covered with diluted acid. The change in the electric charge between the two liquids caused a shudder at the point where they met, and moved up the tube. This capillary electrometer was the first highly sensitive voltometer, able to measure electrical currents as small as 1/1,000 of a volt, and was widely used in the era before solid - state electronics.
Thanks in part to this invention, Lippmann was granted his doctorate by the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, in 1875. A year later, he published another paper that showed how it was possible to reverse the electromagnetic phenomenon. This could be done, he demonstrated, by altering the shape of the mercury by mechanical means; if it was squeezed together, it impacted the electrical field between the mercury and the acid. In order to demonstrate this phenomenon, he devised an engine that worked on the same principles of the capillary electrometer. The engine would turn when electrified and produced electricity when turned mechanically. "Lippmann built upon the earlier work of French engineer Nicolas - Léonard - Sadi Carnot," explained the World of Physics contributor. "In 1824 Carnot demonstrated, with a reversible heat engine, the thermodynamic principle that there exists an inverse (or opposing) and measurable relationship between heat and force. Following this reasoning, Lippmann established a more general theorem that he published in 1881. It states that given any phenomenon, the reverse phenomenon also exists and that one can calculate its degree of change."
Enjoyed Long and Esteemed Career
In 1883, Lippmann became a professor of mathematical physics at Paris's Faculty of Sciences laboratory. He was named professor of experimental physics there three years later, and eventually served as laboratory director and oversaw its administrative incorporation into the Sorbonne. His other contributions to physics were many: he devised a method of taking high - speed photographic images to record the behavior of pendulums, and also worked on several instruments that came into use in the sciences of astronomy and seismology. One of these was the coelostat, the successor to siderostat. This particular device was a mirror attached to a machine, which reproduced the axis and rotation of the Earth. This enabled scientists to photograph large regions of the sky, not just a single star, without any motion of the Earth interfering with the picture. Lippmann's offshoot of his coelostat was the uranograph, which made a photographic map of the sky with longitudes automatically imprinted on it. He also found ways to measure longitudinal differences between observatories through radio and photography. In seismology, he found a way to use telegraphic signals to allow for the early detection of earthquakes and how fast they traveled.
Despite this impressive list of achievements in science, it was for the first permanent color photographic process that Lippmann would be awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in physics. Back in the early 1800s, scientists discovered that moist silver chloride could reproduce the colors of the spectrum. In 1848, Edmond Becquerel became the first to reproduce colored objects on a silver plate covered with a layer of silver chloride, but the colors faded on the plate over time. In 1890, Otto Weiner confirmed that Becquerel's achievement came from "interference" light waves that had been trapped at different levels in the layer of silver chloride, which was related to the phenomenon of seeing rainbow colors in soap bubbles, or in an oil patch on a road.
A year later, in 1891, Lippmann published findings that described a new method for color photography, using a transparent plate with a layer of silver nitrate, gelatin, and potassium bromide in an emulsion. The plate was then placed, emulsion - side - down, in a holder in a camera. "When the incoming light struck the light reflected from the mercury, stationary light patterns were produced that left their impression in the emulsion," explained the World of Invention. "This impression reproduced the natural colors of" what had been photographed by the camera. Though the colors reproduced were permanent, Lippmann's was an impractical method. It was not possible to make multiple copies, for example, and the lengthy exposure time - from three hours but eventually reduced to just a minute - still made it unfeasible for mass production.
Little is known about Lippmann's life outside of the laboratory. He married a woman named Cherbuliez in 1888, but they had no children. Author of two books, Cours de thermodynamique in 1886 and Cours d'acoustique et d'optique in 1888, he was a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Bureau des Longitudes, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. He died at sea on July 13, 1921, aboard the liner La France, on the return journey from a French scientific mission to Canada.
Books
World of Invention, 2nd edition Gale Group, 1999.
World of Physics, 2 volumes Gale Group, 2001.
Periodicals
Times (London, England), July 15, 1921.
