Early days of photography: silver from coins?

jay moussy · Sep 9, 2021

Poking around, I found a number of 1850's "Traite de Photographie" documents.

In one, the recipe for silver solution called for silver coinage, plus another ingredient, text unreadable.

Did anyone encouter the same reference to the use of coinage?

Kino · Sep 9, 2021

Yes, it was probably Nitric Acid. I have been told it's not worth the danger; buy it pre-dissolved and save your eyesight...

BrianShaw · Sep 9, 2021

Coin silver was historically a source of known/guaranteed quality material for eating ware. Next higher quality was sterling silver but I have no idea how silversmiths acquired that.

john_s · Sep 9, 2021

A friend of mine used to electroplate some car parts like dashboard hardware with silver using older Australian silver coins. The coins minted before 1947 (approx) had a higher silver content. I don't remember what he used to dissolve the silver, but the coins were one electrode.

mshchem · Sep 9, 2021

Ol Reverend Burbank's book called out how to make Gold chloride from USA Gold coins. That was decidedly pre-1933 confiscation of gold by Franklin Roosevelt. After all, with the Federal Reserve taking care of our gold instead of a $20 gold piece being worth 20 dollars today it's $1900! Now that's progress!

koraks · Sep 11, 2021

jay moussy said:
Did anyone encouter the same reference to the use of coinage?

Not that, but I have by means of an experiment dissolved a tiny bit of silver wire (used for jewelry) in nitric acid. I then proceeded to make a salted paper print with the dissolved silver nitrate. It worked.
You don't want to do this in any significant quantities without knowing *exactly* what you're doing and with very good ventilation throughout the process.

Early days of photography: silver from coins?

jay moussy

Kino

BrianShaw

john_s

mshchem

koraks

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