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The dilemma of detail versus reproducibility was resolved in 1851
by an Englishman, Frederick Scott Archer, who introduced the collodion
process. This method, also known as the wet plate technique,
involved coating a glass plate with silver iodide in suspension,
exposing it while still wet, and developing it immediately. Once
fixed and dried, the glass plate was covered with a thin, flexible
film containing the negative image, the definition and detail of
which approached that of the daguerreotype. As this process merged
the advantages of both its predecessors, it was universally adopted
within a very short time.
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