Our third clue provided the most important connection, for it showed : Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, said to be the inventor of the photograph. However this card tells the truth, that it was a man called Niepce, actually Joseph Nicephore Niepce, who did that, in the 1820s, (though this card says 1814), and he freely admitted his idea, of taking permanent pictures with the sun, was just an adaptation of lithographic printing. Then in 1829 he teamed up with Daguerre.
As for the date of World Photography Day, August 19th, it is not the birthday of either man, nor the day that any equipment was invented. Instead it is the date that the French Academy of Sciences released the daguerreotype patent to the world and technically allowed anyone to become a photographer
The first thing to chat about is that there are many versions of this set, and four different titles, as well as untitled versions - scans of which will appear here by the time of the newsletter. Curiously R. & J. Hill also issued this set by another title as well, that being "Inventors and Their Inventions", much earlier, in 1907, and also as untitled versions.
However only our set carries this title, two of the versions being named for R. & J. Hill, and this one not. plain 1934. All three were said to have been issued in 1929, and all are sets of thirty-five cards, whereas the Inventors sets are only of twenty.
Those first two, Hill, sets are :
1. a coloured set, standard size, 2 5/8" x 1 5/8", [66 x 37], being printed by Ripley & Co. of London, in three colours, from half-tone blocks, the backs of the cards stating "Issued by The Spinet House, R. & J. Hill, Ltd. & H. Archer & Co."
2. a coloured set, larger size, 3 1/16" x 2 1/4", [77 x 66], also printed by Ripley.
Now our set is rather different in several ways. In our reference book RB.2, published in 1942, it appears in the same section as the large coloured set above, with no date of its own. I used to think that this meant it was issued at the same time, but I suddenly realise it just looks that way because the date is missing. And in these early books, there are no card codes; if there had have been, it would have been clearer to see it was an entirely different set. Anyway, the catalogue of the third series in that book is :
35. SCIENTIFIC INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES (titled series). Size 2 3/4" x 1 1/2" [66 x 37]. Numbered 1-35. These cards are produced by photography from the coloured set quoted above. Fronts, printed black only, from half-tone blocks - black and white - narrow, black marginal line and margins. Cream card. Backs, printed in jet black only, with descriptions and inscribed, "Pipe Smokers are recommended to try The Spotlight Tobaccos, . . ." No makers name appears anywhere. [see Henry Archer & Co.) Printed by W. Oliver.
Now I do have some theories about these cards, but I am not a Hill specialist, so I welcome being corrected by anyone who is.
The first is that though they appear under R. & J. Hill in our reference books, there is a suspicion that they may have been instead issued through Henry Archer & Co., who were amalgamated with Hill in 1905. This is supported by them being mentioned in the quotation above, as well as in the header of our original World Tobacco Issues Index, under Archer, where it states that "Some of the Anonymous issues associated with Hill were probably issued with Archer`s brands". Though "Spotlight" was stated to be a Hill brand.
Secondly, there is this really odd fact that they were produced by taking photographs of the fronts of another set, and by another printer. Why not just ask the original printer for a re-run? In black only, if you were strapped for cash? And my thought is that they could not, either because Ripley had gone out of business (but surely then the artwork would have come back to Hill) - or that the cards are much later than we think, and the Ripley premises had been hit by a similar bomb to that which destroyed the R. & J. Hill factory and all their paperwork and records in 1941 - or maybe, that after the Hill factory was gone, they came across a coloured set and thought they would be able to continue issuing cards, or at least this one set to test the feasibility, by getting someone to use them as artwork. This does not explain why they were converted to black only, rather than colour, unless what they actually found were the black and white original drawings, or artwork, rather than the cards that we have long been presuming the photos were taken off?