History Buffs: Kodak Stanley Dry Plates

Can anyone tell me what size the Kodak Stanley Dry Plates were available in?

Jeremy Moore said:

Can anyone tell me what size the Kodak Stanley Dry Plates were available in?

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Stanley Dry Plate of Newton Mass. I have several boxes of 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 glass plates dated in the very early 1900's. I'd assume they made most of the common sizes also in 4x5, 5x7, 6 1/2 x 8 1/2, and 8x10.

I know that Stanley Dry Plates was associated with Stanley Steamer. Did Kodak acquire Stanley Dry Plates in the early 1900's ??

Bill Riley

Yep, Kodak bought them in 1905 and then proceeded to make quite a killing selling their dry plates.

Hey guys,
Stanley dry plates get their name from the twin brothers F. E. and F. O. Stanley who invented their own dry plate and went into the dry plate business in 1884. Their sister Chansonetta was apparently an accomplished photographer. They sold the plate formula to Eastman Kodak in 1904 (according to the Stanley Museum) and focused on their steam automobile. Kodak later sold the formula to Defender, now Dupont, and the plates were allegedly produced until about 1960.

Anyway, I dug out a 1913 photo supply catalog and it lists Stanley "Regular and Commercial" plates in the following sizes:
2 1/2 x 2 1/2
3 1/4 x 3 1/4
3 1/2 x 1 1/2
3 1/4 x 4 1/4
4 x 5
4 1/4 x 4 1/4
4 1/4 x 5 1/2
4 1/4 x 6 1/2
5 x 7
5 x 8
6 1/2 x 8 1/2
8 x 10
10 x 12
11 x 14
14 x 17
16 x 20
17 x 20
18 x 22
20 x 24

For the record, many Stanley boxes show up, but Seed's, Hammer's, and Cramer's seem to have been listed in more early catalogs.

stanley dry plats

I have recently come across a box of stanley dry plates and would like to know how to go about making prints out of them. The plates are in their original box (no date on it) and from the images viewed through a little backlight they look to be "turn of the century" age pictures. The woman that has them thinks they might be her grand-parents (she is 86). Anybody out there have some info about the processing?

rayc said:

I have recently come across a box of stanley dry plates and would like to know how to go about making prints out of them. The plates are in their original box (no date on it) and from the images viewed through a little backlight they look to be "turn of the century" age pictures. The woman that has them thinks they might be her grand-parents (she is 86). Anybody out there have some info about the processing?

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Contact print them.

Wanna be really authentic, consider using POP instead of DOP (POP = printing out paper, DOP = developing out paper). Time to start cracking eggs and make some albumen!

Seriously, you may have pretty good luck with standard photo paper and contact printing. You may need a strong light source or perhaps a UV source. I had some old family photos and ended up using both techniques.

My daughter bought me a few boxes of turn of the century 5x7 glass plates at an estate auction a while back. They can be contact printed onto ordinary photo paper but it's a little bit of a pain: whomever took these plates wasn't a fan of the zone system, that's for sure! (Yes, I know...) Widely varying exposure: some plates are extremely underexposed, the best might be considered only a little bit underexposed. I suppose that they've faded in the century they were stored in this fellow's barn, too.

Just lay the plate emulsion side down onto paper and expose with a light bulb or enlarger light (that's what I used.) Because my plates appear underexposed, the exposure times are short and I've been using higher-than-normal contrast filters, too.

Mike