Question about a 1908 photo that might be a fake

[limr]

awwwwwww ... look at the cute little kittens

Those kittens are damn cute! Maybe they CAN save the thread!

The question remains, however: is it worth it?

 

[astroNikon]

This thread crashed and burned before it was able to take off ... ironic that we're talking about a glider/airplane too ...

 

[robbins.photo]

This thread crashed and burned before it was able to take off ... ironic that we're talking about a glider/airplane too ...

True, I would wish to point out however for the record that no actual Kitties were harmed in the making of this thread. So, there is that.. lol

 

[MarshallG]

Then, after pulling off the scam of the century, possibly the greatest scam in all of recorded history, suddenly their machine which never worked before miraculously starts peforming far beyond anyone's wildest dreams? That doesn't strike you as being, well, pretty ludicrous really?

EXACTLY. The fact that the Wright Brothers built thousands of excellent airplanes proves that they knew how to build airplanes. These guys were in Ohio and North Carolina, of all places. There was nobody to steal a design from. They didn't hack into France's computers and steal the plans.

As a conspiracy theory, it's one of the worst I've ever heard.

 

[table1349]

Then, after pulling off the scam of the century, possibly the greatest scam in all of recorded history, suddenly their machine which never worked before miraculously starts peforming far beyond anyone's wildest dreams? That doesn't strike you as being, well, pretty ludicrous really?

EXACTLY. The fact that the Wright Brothers built thousands of excellent airplanes proves that they knew how to build airplanes. These guys were in Ohio and North Carolina, of all places. There was nobody to steal a design from. They didn't hack into France's computers and steal the plans.

As a conspiracy theory, it's one of the worst I've ever heard.

The wright brothers only built 30 planes themselves and a total of around 100 planes in total. The Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company was only in business from November 1909 to early 1915 under the ownership of Orvile Wright. It was sold in 1915 and folded in 1916.

 

[vintagesnaps]

I don't think it would have been likely that a photographer would have been able to fake a collodion glass plate photo. The collodion only lasts about 10 minutes to get an exposure. Contact prints can be made but I don't see how two images would be superimposed. I suppose someone would need to go out with an antique view camera and glass plates and use a collodion process and see if it was even possible.

Photography: The Wet Collodion Process

Even shooting film and using an enlarger where you're projecting light thru the negative onto the easel below I don't think it would be that easy to stack two negatives and not have a double exposure. If a plane was photographed separately I wouldn't find it that easy to dodge out some background (say of the sky) in a photo of a plane, and burn in the background of a photo of a field - and blend the two images and make it look realistic in a print.

I've been past the Wright Brothers airport but haven't gotten back when it's open to see the replica B flyer, but having seen a video of it in flight it apparently doesn't go all that high or fast or far. So I don't know during early test flights if it would have been that easy to lug around a big wooden view camera and set up and expose the emulsion on the plate and manage to get a picture of a plane that was in the air for seconds to minutes - much less be able to fake a photo with what was available in that era.

 

[Derrel]

I'm not an expert, but I'm positive that at this time, almost everybody who was out doing real-life documentary work at this time (the early years of the twentieth century) was shooting dry" plates....rollfilm had been developed almost two decades earlier...I do not think anybody except fine artist types would be shooting wet plate in 1904 or 1908. George Eastman began commercial, mass production of dry plates in his own factory in 1879...and there were some AWESOME cameras made that shot dry plates...basically, LARGE-sized "single lens reflex cameras", with large focal plane shutters, and massive mirrors, and "look down" (aist-level type, not eye-level use) viewfinders.

Just a reminder of how advanced photography actually was by the mid-1880's... Snowflake Bentley Biography

 

[photoguy99]

Yes, dry plate. Essentially the same as modern negative materials for our purposes, and a somewhat soft image at that.

ETA: The catalog record indicates that this is a 5x7 dry plate.

Since the aircraft image itself is slightly blurry, adding enough blur to "cover up the seams" in the final transfer to the plate would have been trivial. Since the aircraft itself is mostly made up of straight lines, and the background is literally featureless sky, I am pretty sure I could have cut the masks to make a fake very similar to this photo, a fake that's just as convincing as this photo. And I'm just a guy with a razor blade, not an actual contemporary expert.

Forensics doesn't work the way people think it does. Sure, you examine the primary object closely. Sometimes, when you have a clumsy fake, you can immediately say "it's fake" and there are probably cases where there is a feature so difficult to fake that you can pronounce it authentic based on internal evidence. The "zoom in.. enhance.. zoom in.. pan left.. AHA THE GRAIN PATTERN DOES NOT MATCH!" scenario is rubbish, unless you're dealing with a deeply incompetent faker.

In the normal case, though, you have neither situation.

You examine external evidence. If the Wright Bros had wanted to fake such a picture, who would they have gone to? Are there any records of any sort indicating that they had any unusual transactions with such a person, or anyone on the short list? Is there any other external evidence that points toward a good quality fake?

At the same time, you try to validate the claims of authenticity. Do we have objective eyewitness accounts? Did the Wright Bros maintain journals, and were the smyth-sewn, and do they contain other authenticable elements in the appropriate chronological order?

You put all this stuff together, apply some experience and judgement, and you make a call.

Examining the photograph, be it a print or a plate, itself is a very very small piece of the puzzle.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Wasn't the original on glass plate? It looks like it in the picture, you can see what looks like a crack in one corner.

In the late 1800s into the 1920s plate photography was still in use with view cameras and folders - some cameras had backs for plates or film. Dry plate photography came into use which made it possible to pre-coat the plates and carry them, expose the images and later develop them. The exposures took much longer so some photographers continued to use wet plates.

Found this on Kodak's site - there was non-curling film in 1902 and 'safety' celluloid film by 1908 (instead of the earlier flammable nitrate film) but it wasn't commonly used til the 1920s. There are pictures of photographers with plate cameras in the 1890s into the early 1900s on the AntiqueCameras.net site.

So it doesn't seem likely that a photographer would have schlepped a camera to a field, then somewhere else to take a picture of a plane, then been able to do a contact print of a double exposed image and make it look like one image, especially with the detail seen in glass plates. Even if it was possible there seems to be documentation of numerous test flights to support that by 1904 the Wright brothers had a plane not a glider in flight.

 

[astroNikon]

At the same time, you try to validate the claims of authenticity. Do we have objective eyewitness accounts? Did the Wright Bros maintain journals, and were the smyth-sewn, and do they contain other authenticable elements in the appropriate chronological order?

You put all this stuff together, apply some experience and judgement, and you make a call.

Examining the photograph, be it a print or a plate, itself is a very very small piece of the puzzle.

In the other links, pilot forums, they provided the list of witnesses and statements that were given by the witnesses at that time.

The OP decided that those witnesses were non-valid for the sake of his argument.