Talk:Frederic Eugene Ives

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Untitled

The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed, 1994 lists Ives, Frederic Eugene (no k in his first name). Which spelling is correct? -- Hey Teacher 06:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention the Smithsonian (in the ext link) and the USPS, which issued a stamp for him in 1996. What authority is there for a 'k' in the name? Stan 21:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

With books.google.com you can verify that the k came in late; most early books use Frederic. Dicklyon 22:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, looks like it was I who moved it. I'm not sure what I was reading at the time, but there are plenty of both. Let's move it back. Dicklyon 22:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I moved it back and fixed a bunch of links. Dicklyon 23:02, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Plastigrams

Cut:

Two of the Plastigrams, one simply titled Plastigrams (1923) and Luna-cy! (1922, re-released with sound 1924) were released with soundtracks recorded in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process.

Is there a source for this, aside from the R. M. Hayes book, "3-D Movies"? Hayes' book is unsourced and contains a lot of errors. The Photoplayer 18:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Halftone process" section revisions

As part of a general expansion and overhaul of this article, I have just drastically revised and expanded the "Halftone process" section and need more space to explain and justify the changes than any reasonable number of edit notes will permit, hence this section to make room for it and to provide a forum for any objections or discussions which may arise.

Apart from a lack of any detail at all about what Ives' processes actually were, the most obvious problem right at the top was the claim, contradicting other material present, that "the half-tone photoengraving process was first invented by Canadians George-Édouard Desbarats and William Leggomade". This appears to be an instance of excessive zeal due either to the recent "discovery" of a little-known inventor who seems to have been unjustly denied proper glory, or to nationalistic sentiments, or perhaps to blood ties, or to some combination of the above. As explained in what is now the second paragraph of the section, there were a number of processes and a number of inventors, and in fact a photoengraving process which reproduced half-tones, documented in several standard histories of early photography, was already in existence in the early 1840s. Sad experience teaches that "first", "earliest" and "oldest" are words which should always raise red flags, because they usually turn out to be wrong unless heavily qualified in some way. For example, what are usually called the "first photograph" and the "first talking picture" are in fact the "oldest known surviving photograph of a camera image" and the "first feature-length film which included sequences of synchronized singing and speech".

Less clear-cut a problem was that the final three paragraphs of the section as it stood, although they provided a fair amount of useful information, were poisoned by a very strong dose of puffery or "peacock language" as it is known in Wikiland. Some of the more extravagant statements were just plain factually inaccurate, e.g., "It is safe to say that the offset lithographic process, the predominant printing technology of the past half-century, could not exist without Ives’ contribution." Actually, offset lithography has also been used to print countless billions of pages of text that do not include halftones or illustrations of any kind, and as far as I am aware Ives did not have a hand in the development of the offset litho process itself.

I happen to be a longtime admirer of Ives and would like to see him more widely acknowledged, but such statements ill serve his memory. It is because of inaccurately broad claims made on his behalf that words such as "charlatan" (encountered in a Wikipedia talk page about another article, used there in good faith by a usually very well-informed editor I highly respect) and "fraud" may now be found applied to him online, and perhaps also in print, trashing his reputation and once seemingly secure place in history, however esoteric. Ives could be prickly in defending his achievements, and his self-promotion may rub modern sensibilities the wrong way, but both traits are hardly unusual in a 19th century autodidact from humble origins. Unlike at least one other 19th century inventor of similar background that comes to mind, he did not make any claims he did not know or in good faith believe to be true, keeping in mind that in an era of limited information and communication it was easy to be unaware of prior or parallel work done by others.

The three paragraphs are now history, unless someone reinstates them, but I have tried to incorporate some of their more worthwhile elements, although not necessarily in the same form, into the new text preceding and now supplanting them. AVarchaeologist (talk) 19:36, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Update: The peacocky material proved to be the product of a cut-and-paste job and the last of it has now been purged. Mention of the initially overtouted Desbarats and Leggomade process, one among several and far from the first, has now been entirely eliminated along with references to other specific halftone process inventors and some very questionable associated dates. The information is available in the main halftone article. Detailing the history of halftones and sorting out the various priority claims and independent parallel developments is far beyond the reasonable scope of this article, and also beyond my area of expertise and particular interest with regard to Ives. It seems sufficient to describe the shortcomings of the early daguerreotype-based processes in order to provide a start or reference point. AVarchaeologist (talk) 13:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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