Gabriel Lippmann Quotations

The length of exposure (one minute in sunlight) is still too long for the portrait. It was fifteen minutes when I first began my work. Progress may continue.

In the case of composite colour, an infinity of systems must be obtained for maxima infinitely slight and with an infinity of interval values separating them - that is to say, the whole thickness of the sensitive layer is occupied in continuous manner by these maxima.

Most of these pictures, taken while travelling, were developed on the mantelpiece of a hotel room, which proves that the method is easy enough to carry out.

When the shot is afterwards subjected to white light, colour appears because of selective reflection.

During exposure, interference takes place between the incident rays and those reflected by the mirror, with the formation of interference fringes half a wavelength distant from each other.

The problem of direct colour photography has been facing us since the turn of the last century.

This result is due to a phenomenon of interference which occurs within the sensitive layer.

The series of photographic operations, developing, washing, final drying, takes about quarter of an hour.

The plate at each point only sends back to the eye the simple colour imprinted. The other colours are destroyed by interference. The eye thus perceives at each point the constituent colour of the image.

I got quite good results from protein plates.

The photography of composite colours that exterior objects present posed a harder problem. At first sight it might have been held impossible.

[On the Gaussian curve, remarked to Poincaré:] Experimentalists think that it is a mathematical theorem while the mathematicians believe it to be an experimental fact.

Life is short and progress is slow