Hermann W. Vogel

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Hermann W. Vogel, with signature in partial Sütterlin handwriting script

Not to be confused with Hermann Carl Vogel.

Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (1834–1898) was a German photochemist and photographer who made key contributions to practical color photography. From 1860 he was a professor at Berlin's Technische Hochschule (from 1879, the Technical University of Berlin), where he introduced photography as a field of study.

Moon, New York, 6 March 1865, a scan of the actual photographic print glued in as frontispiece in Vogel's book Die chemischen Wirkungen des Lichts und die Photographie, 1873. The original moon photo is attributed to Rutherford, but signed Lewis M. Rutherfurd.

In 1873 he discovered how to increase the sensitivity of photographic emulsions, (which until then were then only sensitive to blue and UV light) to green light by adding dyes. By 1884 he had discovered how to extend the sensitivity into the orange. However the achievement of a fully panchromatic response, into the red, had to wait until fresh dye-discoveries, in the early 1900s, shortly after his death.

In addition to his work as a photographic technical innovator, Vogel taught Alfred Stieglitz between 1882 and 1886. He participated in at least two photographic expeditions to Egypt as well as others to Italy and possibly Asia.

[edit] Publications

Lehrbuch der Photographie (3. Aufl., Berlin 1878);
Praktische Spektralanalyse irdischer Stoffe (2. Aufl., Berlin 1888 ff.);
Die chemischen Wirkungen des Lichts und die Photographie (2. Aufl., Leipzig 1883);
Die Photographie farbiger Gegenstände in den richtigen Tonverhältnissen (Berlin 1885);
Vom Indischen Ozean bis zum Goldland Reisebeobachtungen (Berlin 1878);
Lichtbilder nach der Natur (Berlin 1879)
über das Spiritistentreiben (Berlin 1880)