Frederick Scott Archer

Grave of Frederick Scott Archer in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Location on map: Frederick Scott Archer (30 August 1814 – 1 May 1857) was an English chemist, photographer, inventor and sculptor who is best known for having invented the photographic collodion process which preceded the dry gelatin emulsion used on plates and films. He was born in Hertford, within the county of Hertfordshire, England (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) and is remembered mainly for this single achievement which greatly increased the accessibility of photography for the general public.

Life Scott Archer was the fifth son, and sixth of seven children, born to Thomas Archer, a Hertford butcher and his wife Elizabeth (née Scott). He left Hertford for London to take an apprenticeship as a goldsmith and silversmith with Mr. Benjamin Massey of 116 Leadenhall Street.

On the recommendation of Edward Hawkins he trained at the Royal Academy Schools as a sculptor and found calotype photography useful as a way of capturing images of his sculptures. Dissatisfied with the poor definition and contrast of the calotype and the long exposures needed, Scott Archer invented the new process in 1848 and published it in The Chemist in March 1851, enabling photographers to combine the fine detail of the daguerreotype with the ability to print multiple paper copies like the calotype. In publishing his discovery, he did so knowingly without first patenting it,

As a sculptor, he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1836 until 1851.

He died impoverished, as since he did not patent the collodion process, he made very little money from it.