Edith Weyde

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Edith Weyde (born September 17, 1901 in Prague ; † February 10, 1989 in Kürten ) was a chemist and inventor of the first successful modern photocopying process "Copyrapid" from Agfa , which was also called "Blitzkopie" and which came onto the West German market in 1949.

Edith Weyde.jpeg

Life and education

Edith Weydes' father was an Austrian high school teacher in Prague, she grew up in Aussig in the Sudetenland and passed her Abitur there in 1919. Her grandfather's laboratory, who had studied botany, zoology and chemistry, fascinated her even as a child. She also got to know photography from an early age through her father and grandfather: for her father she took over the copying of the prints in sunlight. She wanted to study chemistry, but initially worked for four years as a laboratory assistant in the "Association for Chemical and Metallurgical Production" in Aussig. She later described this period as her most important apprenticeship years.

Edith Weyde began studying chemistry at the Technical University of Dresden , where she did her doctorate four years later at the Photography Institute under Robert Luther , the institute's founder and director. She was one of only three women in her semester. In 1927 she received her doctorate on the topic of new materials for X-ray screens .

Working life

Robert Luther helped her to get her first job in the photographic and photochemical laboratory of IG Farbenindustrie AG in Oppau in 1928. After four years the laboratory was downsized and Edith Weyde was transferred to the Agfa photographic paper factory in Leverkusen. In the relatively small factory she worked on improving the tropical suitability of photo papers and developed stabilizers for the photographic layers for this purpose. She was involved in the development of the first Agfacolor papers from 1937 and also made contributions here that contributed to the success of early color photography.

invention

Develop flash copiers

Edith Weyde's tasks also included testing materials and assessing complaints. And the “quite numerous” complaints (quote EW) led her to the discovery of a previously unknown phenomenon, silver salt diffusion in photographic layers. On the back of criticized photo prints - where there is no light-sensitive layer - the chemist discovered negative images of the front in blurry spots. Since there was no explanation for this, she became curious. The cause was soon found out: the photographer had put entire stacks of prints from the developer straight into the fixer. There the unexposed silver image dissolved and migrated to the back of the paper of the print adhering to it. Because the "sloppy way of working" (EW) meant that there was still developer between the stacked prints, the diffused silver salt was developed in the fixer and formed a negative. Edith Weyde recognized that a new photographic process could emerge from this. The simultaneous development of negative and positive would save an enormous amount of time. She managed to make the process professionally usable and she convinced the company management to apply for a factory patent. On January 25, 1941, Agfa was granted the patent for Edith Weyde's "Process for the accelerated production of a photographic positive image from a template". The Second World War prevented the further development of the desired office copying process. After the currency reform in 1948 , Agfa invited all German manufacturers of photo-technical products to design a development device suitable for office use for the "Copyrapid" process. Walter Eisbein, co-owner of the Trikop company from Stuttgart, succeeded in doing this in less than two months. His device called " Develop " met all expectations. Agfa then presented the novel photocopying process to the press. This coined the term "Blitzkopie", which was also used by Agfa and Develop (formerly Trikop) in the first years of marketing.

Market success

On October 1, 1949, Copyrapid and the Develop device were launched in Germany. The quick copy was immediately successful. "The papers that we had produced for three months were gone / sold in three weeks", Edith Weyde reported in an interview in 1988. The innovation also became a bestseller in neighboring European countries. In North America, the new copying method came on the market in 1952. In ten years, around 300,000 copiers have been sold in the United States alone. The success in Japan was also phenomenal. There the copyrapid process was freely usable because Agfa had not applied for a Japanese patent.

Competitor

The success of the flash copy created a new international market segment with high growth rates. This was also interesting for other companies. From the mid-1950s, American companies brought out their own processes: “ThermoFax” from 3M and “Verifax” from Kodak and “Electrofax” from RCA. At the same time as Edith Weyde's invention, the physicist Chester F. Carlson invented xerography in New York City in 1938 . In 1949, the Rochester company Haloid launched the "XeroX Model A", the first manually operated office copier for normal paper on the American market. But there was no success in the office sector. Until the mid-1950s, xerography was mainly used for the production of printing plates for office offset printing.

Parallel inventions

On November 2, 1939, Andre Rott applied for a British patent for Gevaert Photo-Producten NV, which was granted on June 21, 1941 (for 16 years). At about the same time and independently of Edith Weyde, he had observed and worked out the silver salt diffusion in the laboratory. Gevaert brought the first product after Rott's invention, the Transargo paper, onto the market as early as 1941. The diffusion of silver salts was already described in 1857 by B. Lefèvre and in 1889 by RD Liesegang in Düsseldorf and explored experimentally.

First commercial applications

  • In 1941 Gevaert brought the first practical application onto the market with the Transargo paper. Transargo was a manual method and not suitable for automation.
  • In 1942, IG Farbenindustrie AG brought out the Agfa Veriflex transparent paper for the production of intermediate originals for the diazotype (blueprint). A film for making aerial photographs directly in the aircraft was also tested for use in the war.
  • 1947 Diaversal by Gevaert for enlarging slides, single images from cinema film and for duplicates of X-rays - at the same time Contargo, a DTR film for the production of outline images for textile printing, was released. Both were monosheet processes where the emulsion layer had to be removed after development.
  • 1948 The first Copyrapid materials were produced under difficult conditions at the Agfa factory in Leverkusen.
  • 1949 W. Eisbein's “Develop” device, which was sold by his company Trikop (later renamed Develop KG Dr. Eisbein & Co) in Stuttgart.

Later commercial applications for Agfa-Gevaert's prepress department

  • 1958 First use of the diffusion process for the production of offset printing matrices.
  • 1967 Introduction of "Professional Proofing Paper" in the USA - later called "Copyproof".
  • 1968 Presentation of the "Rapilith" film - a PE-laminated paper printing plate for small offset.
  • 1976 Introduction of "Copychrome", "Directolith", "Transferlith"
  • 1976 "AGISS - Agfa-Gevaert Identification Security System"

Later commercial applications for Kodak prepress

  • 1958 "Chemical Transfer"
  • 1960 "CT" offset printing foils on aluminum and paper
  • 1967 "Instafax"
  • 1969 "PMT" transfer material

Edith Weyde's discovery of the simultaneous generation of positive and negative was a high point in chemically based photographic processes - a real milestone. At the same time, it represents one of the last great innovations in conventional analog photography. Even if her employer Agfa deliberately limited itself to reprographic applications and Polaroid left the market to visual photography, it was Edith Weyde who was the first to take instant photos with her 9th × 12 camera created: "In 1937 she took the first one-minute picture of a person - long before Polaroid ...". In the early days of her invention, she had suggested that this method should be developed for street photographers, but management refused. Ten years later, Edwin Land succeeded in expanding his small company Polaroid into a global company with instant photography.

honors and awards

See also

swell

  • Exhibition catalog “Four decades of image transmission through diffusion. Milestones in photography. ”Sterckshof, Provinciaal Museum voor Kunstambachten, Deurne - Antwerp, 1978.
  • Historic office world, No. 40, 12/1994 - excerpt from an interview in the FAZ on December 27, 1988.
  • "Women chemists - there were and there are", published by AKCC, Working Group Equal Opportunities in Chemistry, April 2003 ( online )
  • “Silver Salt Diffusion Process - From the Beginnings to the Present” in “The Polygraph”, 20–79.
  • Interview Edith Weyde, WDR 2, September 1986.
  • Video interview with Edith Weyde, August 1988, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QgH653mvQY
  • How a Blitzcopy (Agfa Copyrapid) is made in 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5egHoNoyR0&feature=youtu.be
  • Book "Edith Weyde - How an inventor from the Rhineland changed the world", German / English, 2016, Edition Makroscope, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Ed. Klaus Urbons & Jan Ehlen , ISBN 978-3-00-054646-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Agfa Spectrum, 1987.
  2. ^ Museum for photocopying, Interview Edith Weyde, VHS video, 1988.
  3. ↑ First “Table of Famous Women” reminds of Edith Weyde
personal data
SURNAME Weyde, Edith
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chemist and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH 17th September 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1989
Place of death Kürten