Joris Mercelis, Johns Hopkins University (jmercelis@jhu.edu)
Author’s pre-print. The final version of this paper has been published by Taylor & Francis in History
and Technology 33, 1 (2017), www.tandfonline.com/eprint/5j3HkTs2TksXc6MEMP2r/full.
Commercializing Academic Knowledge and Reputation in the Late
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Photography and Beyond
This article argues that Hermann Vogel (1834–1898), the head of the photochemical
laboratory of the Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg, was not exceptional in
pursuing business undertakings throughout his academic career. After highlighting the
involvement of higher education employees of various disciplines and institutions in the
photographic industry as consultants, patentees, and entrepreneurs, I more closely examine
the commercial activities of Vogel and those of Adolf Miethe (1862–1927), Vogel’s successor
in Berlin. This analysis points to a notable continuity through time. It shows that these
scientists’ decades-long engagement in commercial work was not materially affected by (1)
their salary levels, (2) the emergence of industrial research in the photographic and optical
industries, and (3) changes in the amount of government funding for scientific research. In
addition, it reveals that the Prussian education ministry maintained a strong focus on
reputational risks in handling complaints concerning commercial activities of these
academics.
1. Introduction
In early 1896 the following announcement was brought to the attention of the Prussian
Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs (Kultusministerium):
“Expert opinion.
The vendor of the Royal Court, the gentlemen J.F. Schwarzlose Söhne, Markgrafenstr. 29,
Berlin, delivered to me for examination five samples of different kinds of German and French
violet extracts that are acknowledged to be the best ones available. I conducted this
examination with the assistance of ladies whose expertise in these matters had already proved
valuable many a time. After repeated tests on paper, cotton fabric etc. I have to declare that
the
German wood violet perfume
was the best, as its pleasant odor lasted the longest and in the most intense way, whereas the
other perfumes very rapidly evaporated.
Professor Dr. H.W. Vogel
at the Royal Institute of Technology [Technische Hochschule] Charlottenburg.”
The named author, photographic scientist Hermann Vogel (1834-98), may have anticipated
that this display of academic credentials to promote a commercial perfume would not amuse
his employer. In defense, Vogel claimed that he had not permitted his consulting clients to
publish the statement, which had appeared in various Berlin newspapers shortly before
Christmas 1895. At the same time, however, Vogel stressed that, even if he had unequivocally
1
lent his authority to such an “advertisement” (Werbung)—the term used by the ministry—that
decision would not have been unusual, or even inappropriate: the head of the photochemical
laboratory
at
the
Technische
Hochschule
Berlin-Charlottenburg
(hereafter
TH
Charlottenburg) simply pointed out that “the gentlemen privy councilor (Geheimrat) Dr.
[Rudolf] Virchow, Prof. [Oskar] Liebreich, privy councilor Dr. [Adolf von] Bardeleben and
the famous Prof. [Justus von] Liebig, as I will substantiate within a week by providing printed
samples, were promoting Apollinaris water in the press in an entirely similar way, over a
period of no less than twenty years, without (to my knowledge) receiving any objection from
their supervisory authorities.”1
This article will provide new evidence that Vogel was right in suggesting that academic
scientists’ involvement in commercial activities was widespread. For example, while the
above-mentioned scientists and physicians generally supported their praise for Apollinaris by
more conventional experiments, Liebreich’s description of Apollinaris as “an exceptionally
pleasant and valuable table water” seems to transgress the same line between “expert
opinions” and “advertisements” that Vogel appeared to have crossed. Vogel moreover could
have added the names of August Hofmann, Edward Frankland, August Kekulé, and William
Odling, among others, to his list of renowned scientists who had bestowed academic authority
on Apollinaris. 2 More fundamentally, even in Vogel’s own relatively small field of study,
photographic science and technology, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century academic
employees engaged in an entire spectrum of commercial activities—from industrial
consulting and patenting to full-blown forms of business entrepreneurship. Importantly, these
scientists were based in a highly diverse set of higher education and research institutions on
both sides of the Atlantic—not just in the practically oriented engineering schools and
institutes of technology associated with the “utilitarian regime of scientific knowledge
production and diffusion” described by Anne Marcovich and Terry Shinn. 3 Moreover,
consistent with the status of nineteenth-century photography as an “art-science,” their
academic backgrounds ranged not just from chemistry to physics and engineering but also
from art history to the fine arts.4 In other words, they include individuals whose disciplinary
fields are not typically associated with commercialization activities.
Besides integrating underexplored disciplines into the analysis, a case study on photographic
science and technology can also help counter the emphasis on the period since World War II
in the literature on the commercialization of academic knowledge, intellectual property, and
reputation. Higher education institutions have never been “ivory towers,” yet the extensive
2
involvement of academics in commercial work long before the “neoliberal turn” of the late
twentieth century does raise several kinds of questions. First of all, what were the motives of
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century academic scientists for engaging in commercial work,
and the reputational and other risks to which they exposed themselves? As for industrial
consulting, the most thoroughly examined commercial activity with regard to this time period,
earlier studies have stressed that academic scientist-consultants were not just seeking to earn
an extra income. Instead, in various cases consulting served at least in part as a strategy for
acquiring knowledge and resources relevant to the consultant’s teaching and/or research
activities, and as a path to social prestige and to jobs for graduating students.5 It has even been
suggested that financial considerations did not come into play at all, as certain scientists (for
example, Oscar Linde in Germany and Oliver Arnold in Britain) did not want to be
reimbursed for at least some of their consulting services.6 However, it would be premature to
discard the explanatory power of the “almighty” dollar, D-Mark, or pound, as the importance
of monetary reasons—and of employment conditions more generally—remains to be
examined more systematically. Moreover, it is still a largely open question whether the range
of motivations that have been identified with respect to the provision of consulting services
also applied to the sale and licensing of patents and the founding and/or directing of business
enterprises. Exploring the relationship between these different commercial activities through a
case study on photographic science and technology will be one of the contributions of this
article.
A second set of questions that I will address concern the attitudes of these scientists’
colleagues, employers, and patrons towards the commercialization of knowledge, reputation,
and intellectual property. Jean-François Auger, Philip Mirowski, and others have argued
convincingly that, in order to grasp the occurrence or nonoccurrence of academic
commercialization activities and of complaints about conflicts of interest, the transformation
of university-industry-government relationships has to be taken into account.7 For example,
the limited evidence available shows that, historically, a recurrent criticism of academic
employees’ involvement in commercial work has been that it represented unfair competition
against local firms that were targeting the same customers but lacked access to academic
knowledge and, especially, prestige.8 The absence of nearby science-related industries could
therefore make academic scientists’ commercial engagements less controversial. But, on the
other hand, this type of commercialization activities were often taken up in response to
demands from—or opportunities provided by—local firms.
3
More specifically, historians have interpreted the commercialization of academic knowledge,
reputation, and intellectual property in relation to the emergence and development of
industrial research and to the available levels of public funding for science. With respect to
the former, their explanations stand in notable tension with each other. One point of view
holds that, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the services of academic
consultants were especially valuable to firms which were not—or only to a very limited
extent—investing in in-house scientific research. Once they had taken that step, so the
reasoning goes, the need to rely on the services and expertise of outside scientists
diminished.9 However, other studies have pointed to cases where companies simultaneously
pursued in-house research and development (R&D) and collaborations with outside
researchers, and shown that these activities could be mutually reinforcing. As historians of
organic chemistry have demonstrated, academics, for their part, also came to depend on the
financial and other support these knowledge-intensive firms provided to them and their
laboratories. As a result, “symbiotic” relationships developed, notably between German
academic chemists and the synthetic dye industry. 10 As for state funding, the spread of
“entrepreneurial universities” over the past decades is often associated with a relative—or
even absolute—decline in government support for scientific research. Christine MacLeod has
recently suggested a similar correlation with regard to late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Britain: she emphasizes how the absence of generous state financing of academic
research created serious—but no insurmountable—pressures for scientists to cover relevant
costs through commercial work. 11 The commercial activities of the academic scientists
analyzed in this article, however, cannot simply be explained by considering the amounts of
public funding at hand. Nor were these undertakings determined straightforwardly by the
knowledge-intensiveness of the photographic industry.
The main sections of this article will develop these themes and arguments through case
studies on Hermann Vogel and his academic successor, Adolf Miethe (1862-1927). Together
Vogel and Miethe held the oldest professorship in photographic science in Germany—one of
the few such positions worldwide created before the twentieth century—for more than 50
years. During these decades the photographic and optical industries became more knowledgeand capital-intensive and the TH Charlottenburg developed into a highly prestigious
institution of higher technical education.12 These changes in Vogel’s and Miethe’s teaching
and research environments stand in sharp contrast with a notable continuity: as I will show
below, based on the archives of the Prussian education ministry and various complementary
4
sources, Vogel and Miethe engaged in commercial work throughout their academic careers. 13
Moreover, as the next section of this article will suggest, they were hardly exceptional in this
respect: other academic employees in a broad range of disciplines and institutions, on both
sides of the Atlantic, likewise commercialized photographic knowledge as patentees,
consultants, and entrepreneurs.
2. Commercializing academic photography: an exploratory survey
From the mid-nineteenth century into the first decade of the twentieth, the science of
photochemistry largely focused on photography-related questions, rather than other aspects of
the interaction between matter and light. 14 Courses on the subject were often not included in
academic curricula. In fact, some of the earliest classes in photographic chemistry, as well as
in photographic optics, were taught at vocational schools. 15 The institution whose scienceintensive photography program was widely regarded as the best one available anywhere in the
world—the K.k. Graphische Lehr– und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna (created 1887)—was
likewise open to students who had not completed a secondary education. Moreover, according
to Klaus Hentschel, the Graphische “despite several attempts never acquired academic status
or the right to confer doctoral degrees or other higher academic accolades.” 16 Still,
photography was also considered a valuable research technology and professional tool for
science and engineering students at higher education institutions. Indeed, a limited set of
European and American universities and institutes of technology already introduced
photographic science and technology courses before the turn of the twentieth century (see
appendix 1).
More research is needed to give a complete overview, but it is clear that several of the
teachers of these classes maintained close ties with the photographic industry or were directly
involved in it themselves. For example, in London, the first photography lecturer of King’s
College, T. Frederick Hardwich, sold self-prepared samples of the nitrocellulose solution
known as collodion—a major photographic chemical—to William White Rouch & Co. In
Dresden, Hermann Krone initially combined his lectures as an unsalaried Privatdozent with
the marketing of photographs and photography-related services and equipment through his
private Photographic Art and Teaching Institute. In Karlsruhe, the scientific photography
professor Fritz Schmidt authored endorsements of photographic developers, papers, and plates
which companies in the industry eagerly quoted in product advertisements. In Vienna, the
photochemist Josef Eder, who combined a professorship at the Polytechnic Institute with the
directorship of the Graphische Lehr– und Versuchsanstalt, worked with the firm of Dr.
5
Eduard Just and other local enterprises to commercialize various inventions. And in New
York City—where an interdisciplinary pair of university professors, Samuel Morse (painting
and sculpture) and John William Draper (chemistry), had famously opened a commercial
daguerreotype portrait studio in 1840—the photographic industry became a source of extra
income for Charles Chandler of Columbia College’s School of Mines. For an annual fee of
approximately $500—or about $12,900 in today’s dollars—Chandler served as editor of the
photographic journal of E. and HT Anthony & Co. in the 1880s and early 1890s.17 Chandler
also consulted for Anthony & Co., a globally active photography firm headquartered in New
York, and provided well-paid scientific expert testimony in critical patent-infringement
litigation against Eastman Kodak.18
There were also several patentees among the professors and lecturers responsible for these
early photography courses. William de Abney, for example, patented a photomechanical
printing process during his years as a photography instructor at the Royal School of Military
Engineering in Chatham, Kent (1871-77).19 In 1884 the physicist Heinrich Kayser, then based
at the University of Berlin, patented a box meant to facilitate the exchanging of exposed and
unexposed photographic plates. Despite his inability to cover all costs himself, Kayser
secured intellectual property protection of this invention in not only Germany but also Britain,
France, and the United States. Kayser’s colleague Ernst Hagen had provided financial
support, but, as the patents did not generate any revenue, Kayser had to find other sources of
income to cover his debts.20 In 1910 the engineer and physicist George Moler, the longtime
teacher of Cornell University’s photography course, patented a cabinet for storing
photographic negatives and lantern slides. Moler expected that there would be a small market
for the invention, including among colleagues at Cornell. Yet, in exchange for a “reasonable
compensation,” he preferred to assign the intellectual property to his patent agent, as “[b]eing
a teacher, a college Professor, I cannot well afford to put the carrier on the market myself.”21
In 1922 Josef Eder likewise put aside his earlier reservations about securing exclusive
property rights on photoscientific knowledge and patented a “Method of protecting against
light of short wave length and composition of matter therefor,” the latter of which became
known as the sun-care product “Antilux.”22 It is likely that Eder’s dire financial situation in
the aftermath of World War I contributed to this change in attitude. For example, in the years
preceding his patent applications in Austria and the United States, Eder had requested food
relief. To cover basic needs, he had also tried to sell spectroscopic samples and various other
6
research materials to, among others, the U.S. National Bureau of Standards and Eastman
Kodak.23
In addition, there were academic employees who pursued commercial undertakings in the
field of photographic science and technology although they did not teach on the subject
themselves. As an example, in the late 1890s Arthur Noyes and Willis Whitney of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ventured into business to exploit a new process
for recovering photographic solvents, in collaboration with the American Aristotype
Company. As the historians John Servos and George Wise have described, this photochemical
enterprise turned out to be highly profitable for both Noyes and Whitney: less than two years
after the foundation of the firm, the chemists were making $1000 per month each. The annual
income thus gained was several times higher than their academic wages and Noyes used this
money to establish a physical chemistry laboratory at MIT.24 On the other side of the Atlantic,
two junior employees of the State University of Ghent, Leo Baekeland and Jules Guequier,
also started their own company to commercialize a new type of photographic dry plate, which
Baekeland had patented in Belgium and several other European countries. Within two years
of its formation, Baekeland voluntarily withdrew from the firm, as well as from the University
of Ghent, to pursue a career as an inventor-entrepreneur in the United States. In contrast, the
entrepreneurial initiatives of the French physiologist Georges Demenÿ and the German art
historian Bruno Meyer created tensions with their employers, which resulted in these
photographic innovators’ departure from academia. Demenÿ, a préparateur at the Collège de
France under Étienne-Jules Marey, had patented a chronophotographic projector and, together
with a group of investors, founded the Société Générale du Phonoscope at the end of 1892 to
market this instrument. Marey initially supported his assistant’s commercialization efforts: he
welcomed the enthusiastic public reception of the “phonoscope” and believed that he would
also profit from the invention as he had taken out a related patent, which the Société Générale
du Phonoscope could not possibly ignore. However, the physiology professor and the
investors were unable to find common ground, in part because of the latter’s focus on
entertainment rather than educational applications for the phonoscope. What is more, after
Marey’s negotiations with the company had broken down in July 1893, Marey requested
Demenÿ to resign from the Collège de France. In the previous decade Bruno Meyer had
likewise given up his art history professorship at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe after
facing regulatory scrutiny of his entrepreneurial activities. Meyer is credited with having
introduced photographic slides as classroom materials in his discipline in the late 1870s. As
7
an extension of his innovative teaching activities, he also set up a studio to produce and sell
art historical slide series. However, his strategy to request his employing institution and the
state of Baden funds for covering his production costs backfired: as Martin Papenbrock has
written, subsidizing a private photographic studio was considered an inappropriate use of
public resources. Meyer therefore left Karlsruhe and started a new photographic enterprise in
Berlin.25
Also in the German capital, the organic chemist Otto Witt (TH Charlottenburg) followed in
the footsteps of August Hofmann by concluding a lucrative consulting agreement with the
Actien-Gesellschaft für Anilin-Fabrication (Agfa), a synthetic dye company which diversified
into photographic manufacturing and research in the years around 1890. Like Abney,
Baekeland, Demenÿ, Eder, Kayser, Marey, and Moler, among several others, Witt also
obtained at least one photography-related patent in the course of his academic employment.26
Close collaboration between academic organic chemists and photography firms was not, by
the way, limited to Germany. In Britain, for example, William Pope and William Mills of
Cambridge University worked with Ilford Limited on the development of cyanine dyes for
color-sensitizing photographic emulsions from World War I into the 1920s.27
In short, Vogel and Miethe were by no means unique in applying for photographic patents,
consulting for incumbent photographic and optical firms, and participating in the creation of
new enterprises. However, a closer analysis is necessary to understand the relationship
between these different commercial activities, their significance in the careers of nineteenthand early twentieth-century academic scientists, and their connection to the different
economic and institutional environments in which they were operating. This is what the next
sections of this article will provide.
3. Academic photography in Berlin: Hermann Vogel (1834-98)
In his memoirs Adolf Miethe, Vogel’s successor at the TH Charlottenburg, described Vogel
as “one of the most curious individuals” he had ever met and cited Vogel’s tainted reputation
as one of the reasons that had made him hesitate before accepting the chair in photochemistry
and spectroscopy at Germany’s leading technology institute. Miethe acknowledged that Vogel
had made critical contributions to his research field, notably regarding the spectral
sensitization of photographic plates. However, he also observed that Vogel’s qualities as a
scientist had been widely questioned and that Vogel had made multiple enemies in
photographic societies as well as in the scientific community, including colleagues from the
8
TH Charlottenburg.28 These conflicts had done harm to the reputation of the photochemical
laboratory and, as a corollary, to its ability to raise the funds necessary to conduct cuttingedge research. In this respect, the legacy left by Vogel was, as Miethe put it, “not exactly
enviable.”29
To what degree, if any, was this animosity against Vogel caused by commercial activities
such as Vogel’s promotion of J.F. Schwarzlose Söhne’s wood violet perfume? Some of the
lengthiest controversies examined by the Prussian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs
suggest that much of it had to do with specific inclinations and personality traits identified in
several biographical accounts, especially Vogel’s vanity and his ungentlemanly habit of
sending out angry refutations as soon as someone critically commented on his actions or
achievements. The Charlottenburg professor, for example, could have avoided a great deal of
trouble if he had more carefully responded to a letter of Alberich Lunden, a Belgium-based
photographer whom a Vogel-led jury had awarded a silver medal at the international
photography exhibition of Berlin in 1889. To Lunden’s surprise, Photographische
Mitteilungen, a journal Vogel had created in 1864 and edited ever since, afterwards featured
one of his prize-winning photographs, which had not been returned to him after the
exposition. Instead of apologizing for having published the picture without the permission of
the copyright holder, Vogel asserted that Photographische Mitteilungen had only selected it
“out of courtesy to a foreigner” as the journal had had more beautiful photos available. Vogel
moreover added that Lunden should be grateful to him, as the photographer had only been
given a silver medal thanks to his personal “intercession” (Fürsprache)—a claim to which the
Prussian education minister Robert von Zedlitz-Trützschler attached particular importance,
for it suggested that Vogel had abused his position as chairman of the jury.30
More relevant for the purposes of this article are a number of other disputes that were at least
indirectly related to Vogel’s activities as a consultant, patentee, and entrepreneur, and which
help elucidate Vogel’s ambivalent relationship with the photographic industry. Germany’s
professional photographers and photography firms certainly appreciated the existence of an
academic position in photochemistry—in combination with spectroscopy (from 1876) and
theory of color and lighting (from 1887)—in Berlin, as it provided them with access to
facilities and expertise that were not available at most other institutions of higher education
and research anywhere in the world. Yet, the introductory nature of Vogel’s courses and their
intended audience of science and engineering students of any specialty—rather than
prospective photographers and photographic researchers—limited their value to much of the
9
photographic community. A vocal faction of the Photographic Society of Berlin was also
skeptical of Vogel’s ambition to more firmly ground photographic technology in science and
criticized him for being too much of a “theoretician.” 31 In addition, as my analysis below will
suggest, Vogel did not primarily address the needs of nearby businesses in his private
consulting work. Rather, these as well as other commercial activities of Vogel tended to
concern products and processes in which he had a personal stake.
3.1. Vogel’s commercial initiatives
My first example of a controversy related to Vogel’s engagement in commercial work
predates the reorganization of the Royal Industrial Academy (kgl. Gewerbeakademie) of
Berlin as a Technische Hochschule in 1879, but reveals patterns that would persist afterwards.
Within three years of his appointment as regular lecturer at the Industrial Academy in 1865,
Vogel had invented a photometer for determining the length of carbon prints’ exposure to
light, which he announced as “Dr. Vogel’s photometer” in his first article on the topic.32 The
PhD scientist guaranteed that he would personally verify the correctness of the measurement
scale of each photometer that was brought to market. The actual manufacturing of the
instrument, however, he outsourced to Ferdinand Beyrich of Berlin and to the prominent
international photography entrepreneurs, Joseph Swan of Newcastle and Hood & Wilson of
Philadelphia, the latter of whom extensively advertised the invention in the United States. 33
As part of these transactions, Swan and Hood & Wilson appear to have encouraged Vogel to
secure patent protection in their respective countries and may have helped Vogel to
successfully accomplish this. 34 The risk of having these British and American patents
invalidated, before or after their granting, partly explains why Vogel was initially unwilling to
meet other photographers’ requests to publicly reveal details of the technology. 35 In addition,
there may have been some truth to the suggestion of Ludwig Schrank, the secretary of the
Photographic Society of Vienna, that Vogel’s “mysterious” communication about the
invention had been a successful strategy for arousing interest in it.36 There are, in any case, no
indications that Vogel’s patents were controversial, despite the contemporaneous anti-patent
protests taking place on both sides of the Atlantic.37 Nor was Vogel primarily criticized for his
secrecy about the photometer. Instead, various commentators took issue with how Vogel
conspicuously associated his own name with the photometer—marketing it „like dental water
and mouthwash with the inventor’s seal of approval”—and seemed to make exaggerated
claims regarding the originality of his inventive contribution. The Hamburg chapter of the
German Photographic Society even splintered off its parent organization after Vogel refused
10
to publish the protocols of its meeting on the subject of priority of invention between him and
Ernst Bernhardt, a local photographer who had devised a photometer similar to Vogel’s.38
This episode did not keep Vogel from promoting a new collodion-gelatin dry plate emulsion
as “Dr. Vogel’s emulsion” approximately a decade afterwards, in the interval between the
creation of the Technische Hochschule in 1879 and Vogel’s actual relocation to
Charlottenburg in 1884. 39 Besides securing intellectual property protection in Germany,
making use of the post-unification patent law of 1877, Vogel and his associates also patented
this invention in Austria, Britain, France, and the United States.40 In his home country Vogel
worked with the chemical factory of Dr. Heinrich Byk—the predecessor of the
pharmaceutical firm Byk Gulden—which was diversifying into the production of
photographic emulsions. Vogel’s international partners included the Parisian photography
firm of A. Schaeffner—whose silver-carbonate paper Vogel and his assistant Karl Schwier
had endorsed in 1869—and Messrs. W. Rouch and Co., the British company which had
previously collaborated with King’s College’s photography lecturer T. Frederick Hardwich.41
“Dr. Vogel’s emulsion” targeted photographers who, like Vogel himself, were reluctant to
fully abandon the wet-collodion technique in favor of the gelatin-silver halide dry plate
process, which was rapidly gaining in popularity in the years around 1880. As Reese Jenkins
and others have shown, technological considerations had been a major factor limiting the
growth prospects of the photographic industry before the advent of the latter process. In
particular, the wet-collodion technique, which was dominant from the mid-1850s until the late
1870s, required photographers to prepare their plates themselves, shortly before using them,
in order to avoid a loss in photosensitivity. The gelatin dry-plate process, by contrast, enabled
the commercial production of ready-to-use plates. Several of the firms which would shape the
photographic industry during much of the twentieth century, including Gevaert, Ilford,
Lumière, and especially Eastman Kodak, entered the sector to take advantage of this
opportunity and the market expansion it made possible. With hindsight, it is clear that Vogel
failed to grasp the magnitude of the shift towards gelatin-silver halide photography and the
speed by which it was taking place: by 1883 it was no longer feasible to produce the
collodion-gelatin emulsion at a competitive price and, accordingly, its manufacture was
stopped.42 Vogel, however, had no difficulty whatsoever in identifying additional commercial
activities with which he could supplement his research and teaching work.
In fact, as early as 1884—the year in which Vogel’s new and much better-equipped
photochemical laboratory at the TH Charlottenburg opened—Vogel received a cash prize
11
from the Berlin Society for the Cultivation of Photography for publishing a color-sensitized
collodion process. Moreover, he took up a new business venture in collaboration with Agfa,
among other partners. Both of these cases built on Vogel’s seminal 1873 discovery that the
sensitivity of photographic plates to certain wavelengths of the light spectrum could be
increased by adding dyes to the emulsions. In the former instance, a request of the Berlin
Society for the Cultivation of Photography—rather than considerations of academic
openness—made Vogel deviate from his earlier strategy of securing formal intellectual
property rights and making exclusive arrangements with a limited number of firms. The
members of the society, of which Vogel had been the first president, had been impressed by
Vogel’s demonstration of collodion plates whose susceptibility to yellow light had been
increased by incorporating eosin as a sensitizing dye. They unanimously passed a resolution
that awarded Vogel 1,000 mark if he fully disclosed the process to the photographic
community—a publication requirement similar to the one attached to the French state pension
offered to Louis Daguerre in 1839.43 Vogel complied with this request, but it did not keep him
from trying to secure monopolistic control in connection with follow-up inventions,
particularly his “azalin plate.” Vogel purposefully kept secret the chemical composition of
“azalin”—a sensitizing dye consisting of a mixture of cyanine and quinoline red—so that he
could fully control its production in partnership with Agfa and a few photographic
manufacturers of his own choosing. 44 However, two Viennese photochemists, Friedrich
Mallmann and Charles Scolick, were able to acquire an azalin sample that was large enough
to identify the solution’s components through chemical analysis. Once they had published
their results, in a clear attempt at damage control, Vogel managed to secure a German patent
for the use of quinolone dye mixtures for photographic purposes. However, he could no
longer prevent others from producing azalin.45
Unlike with Vogel’s earlier patents and commercial arrangements, the views of his employer
on the azalin business are explicitly documented in my sources. More precisely, an 1886
article by Mallmann and Scolick, which was part of an extended polemic on the topic between
Vogel and them, was brought to the attention of the Prussian Ministry of Education and
Cultural Affairs. In the piece, the Austrian photochemists indicated that they had wanted to
“once and for all end” Vogel’s secretive promotional campaign for azalin, and suggested that
their publication of azalin’s composition had made Vogel lose “a good business.” The
education ministry was, however, not convinced that Vogel had acted inappropriately. In fact,
it concluded that it had been legitimate to charge a high price for azalin in light of the
12
originality of the idea of using this dye for what is now known as the spectral sensitization of
photographic emulsions.46
3.2. Vogel’s unexceptional start-up company
Similarly, there are no indications that Vogel’s supervisory authorities disapproved of his
involvement in the creation of a photography firm in the early 1890s, one of the last major
business endeavors in Vogel’s career. This venture concerned a three-color photomechanical
printing process developed by the lithographer Emil Ulrich, Vogel, and Vogel’s son Ernst,
who had joined his father’s academic laboratory as an assistant in 1890. Ulrich had made the
initial invention of a practical color printing technique, partly building on published work of
Hermann Vogel and other early researchers of color photography. It was only after the
lithographer had been awarded a “first class diploma of honour” at the German Exhibition of
Arts, Industries & Products in London in 1891 that he joined Hermann and Ernst Vogel in the
photochemical laboratory of the TH Charlottenburg to refine the process. Together with the
art
dealer
Hermann
Pächter,
these
men
then
formed
the
Gesellschaft
für
Naturfarbenlichtdruck (Society for Natural-Colored Collotype Printing), committing
themselves to keeping the invention secret for a period of ten years.47 Under the commercial
leadership of Pächter, who ran a gallery in Berlin, the company acquired the permission to
replicate works of prominent German painters such as Adolph Menzel and Ludwig Knaus,
and organized a small but well-attended display. 48 Moreover, in 1892 it received a major
boost when the German American photographer William Kurtz, who operated an
internationally acclaimed gallery in New York, purchased the right to use the technique and
started to spend thousands of dollars on further experiments aimed at making it commercially
viable on a large scale. In collaboration with Ernst Vogel, Kurtz managed to produce a threecolor print of a still life with fruit (figure 1), which was used time and again to promote the
process to potential investors and customers. 49 In 1893 Kurtz created the Colorotype
Company as a next step and also showcased a selection of prints at the Chicago world’s fair,
which Hermann Vogel unashamedly endorsed as the “most important and interesting
photographic object on exhibition” on behalf of the event’s photography jury. Coincidentally
or not, in the following year the Gesellschaft für Naturfarbenlichtdruck sold out to another
attendee of the world’s fair, the head of the German printing company Georg Büxenstein &
Co. To move the invention beyond the experimental stage, Büxenstein then created a
chemical-graphical arts establishment (chemigraphische Kunstanstalt) and engaged Ernst
Vogel as a technical director. Ernst’s father, for his part, continued to promote the three-color
13
printing technique to the photographic community, as well as to the socio-political elite, after
the sale to Büxenstein. Indeed, as late as July 1898—less than six months before his death at
the age of 64—Vogel took it on himself to update the then Prussian education minister Robert
Bosse on the development of the process and its commercial adoption over the five previous
years. Vogel claimed that he himself had laid the foundations for the invention through his
1873 discovery of spectral sensitization and the theory for matching printing plates with
sensitizing dyes that he had proposed in the following decade. Characteristically, he thus
foregrounded his personal accomplishments as well as the practical value of photographic
science.50
Figure 1: “Natural-colored print according to the process E. Vogel-Kurtz.” In a June 1893 meeting
attended by Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig, a top administrator at the education ministry, Hermann Vogel
commented that, when it came to this still life, the achieved result had exceeded his own and his
collaborators’ expectations. In the photochemist’s words, “we had printed not just the color, but the
gnarledness of the pineapple, the delicate fluff of the peaches, the translucent moistness of the cut
lemons also became visible, in short there appeared a piece of nature which we had not
anticipated.”51
14
In the ongoing scholarly and policy discussion on academic entrepreneurship, the creation of
high-technology start-up companies by academic employees such as Hermann Vogel and his
son has been at the center of attention, notably in connection with the life sciences since
World War II. However, Vogel’s career supports the argument that it is not very helpful to
narrow this area of inquiry to cases where scientists acted as “entrepreneurs” in a strict sense
of the term, namely, as company founders.52 First of all, from Vogel’s point of view, there
were notable similarities between his role in commercializing the three-color printing process
and his participation in earlier business endeavors that did not involve the formation of new
firms. For example, in all of the cases analyzed, Vogel was clearly driven by the desire to
show that, contra his critics in the Photographic Society of Berlin, his scientific investigations
did have a practical value. By demonstrating this, he could not only gain more recognition for
his personal achievements, but also support the development of carbon and color
photography, two fields in which he had a special interest. In addition, it is evident that Vogel,
who tried to make a name for himself in Berlin’s high society despite his petit-bourgeois
background, was seeking to supplement his academic income. Unfortunately, it is not possible
to determine whether the earnings from Vogel’s extramural work generally exceeded his basic
salary at the TH Charlottenburg, which gradually increased to a maximum of 6500 marks/year
by the end of his career. There can, however, be no doubt that the total amount of his extraacademic earnings was substantial. Vogel’s biographer Eduard Röll, for example, estimates
that he derived “quite handsome revenues” from editing Photographische Mitteilungen—a
plausible assessment considering that Adolf Miethe, Vogel’s later academic successor, could
afford a “wonderful, sunny, carefree life” around the time of his wedding in 1890 thanks to
the extra income gained from his work as editor of a rival trade journal.53 Vogel was also paid
for his regular contributions to other photography journals—Anthony & Co., for example,
offered him $5/page—and his multiple books on the state and development of photographic
science and technology were translated and promoted on both sides of the Atlantic. Like
Miethe did later, Vogel also sold actual photographs: in the second half of the 1860s, an
album with landscape images he had captured in Berlin’s Tiergarten was available for almost
9.5 Prussian thaler, about 2.5% of Vogel’s then yearly salary at the Industrial Academy. Last
but not least, in the mid-1890s Vogel’s laboratory at the TH Charlottenburg tested the
sensitivity of photographic plates of external clients for a fee of 5 mark/piece—a
comparatively lower price, but the service appears to have been popular.54 In short, to Vogel,
establishing a firm was not just one among several options for bringing an invention to
15
market: it was also not more than one of an even broader range of possible sources of
supplementary income.
From the point of view of Vogel’s employer, there also does not appear to have been a sense
that Vogel’s participation in the Gesellschaft für Naturfarbenlichtdruck deserved special
scrutiny or support. The Prussian education ministry received one complaint that may have
been related to the venture: Vogel’s former assistant Dankmar Schultz-Hencke charged that
the photochemist had inappropriately exerted influence to ensure that he, rather than SchultzHencke, was selected as a jury member for the photography competition at the Chicago
world’s fair, where both Kurtz and Georg Büxenstein were present. However, due to Vogel’s
bad health—he was diagnosed with diabetes in 1889 and regularly had to request medical
leave during the remainder of his life—hearings in the case were postponed multiple times
and the matter ultimately seems not to have been pursued any further.55 More fundamentally,
there is no evidence that Vogel’s supervisory authorities—or his colleagues at the Department
of Chemistry and Metallurgy—disapproved of the use of the photochemical laboratory for the
creation of a start-up company in which they themselves did not have a stake. As with
Vogel’s previous commercial activities, they also did not suggest that his entrepreneurial
initiative might distract him from his research and teaching work. Nor did they ever denounce
access restrictions to his inventions resulting from publicly funded research, or request an
interest in patents or profits they had generated. Instead, the education ministry’s only major
concern in relation to Vogel’s extramural engagements appears to have been about the
safeguarding of the reputation of its technology institute. By this criterion, it found none of
Vogel’s commercial activities as worrying as his contribution to the perfume advertisement
described at the beginning of this article, for which he received a reprimand and a warning
never again to provide this kind of scientific veneer.
3.3. Protecting reputation: Victor Griessmayer and Alfred Junghahn
The ministry’s focus on the reputation of the TH Charlottenburg, and the threats posed to it by
questionable “expert opinions,” is also evident from the experiences of two other members of
Vogel’s department, the private lecturers (Privatdozenten) Victor Griessmayer and Alfred
Junghahn. When asked to justify the appearance of his name and employing institution below
a short newspaper article promoting the therapeutic powers of the malt chocolate of the Berlin
manufacturer Johann Hoff, Griessmayer admitted that he had authored the piece. More
pertinently, in exchange for an honorarium, Griessmayer had permitted Hoff to publish the
announcement in newspapers of his firm’s own choosing, without any restriction. Due to this
16
authorization, Griessmayer was not in the position to comply with the minister’s request to
prevent the statement’s appearance in any additional media outlets. Therefore, and in light of
Hoff’s intention to also publish it in the provincial press, Griessmayer offered his
resignation.56
Alfred Junghahn had joined Vogel’s department in 1897 as an assistant in the chemical
technology laboratory of Otto Witt. Ten years later, Junghahn was granted the title of
professor—while retaining the position of Privatdozent—as a reward for his decade-long
service. However, to the alarm of the education ministry, before the end of the year his
professor’s title already appeared below a promotional statement for a patent agency that, in
view of its doubtful reputation, was not even recognized by the German Patent Office. 57
Moreover, an article in the trade journal Schuh und Leder (Shoe and Leather) also seemed to
advertise Junghahn’s academic credentials in a misleading manner. As required by law, the
education minister actively involved the Department of Chemistry and Metallurgy in the
subsequent investigation and in the process of determining an appropriate sanction.
Significantly, the department unanimously ruled that Junghahn’s behavior had been “highly
objectionable.” It took special offense at the article in Shoe and Leather, which erroneously
suggested that Junghahn had been promoted to a professorship in leatherworking. Like the
ministry, Junghahn’s colleagues regarded the piece as a commercial advertisement, partly
meant to attract customers for Junghahn’s private laboratory, rather than the academic expert
opinion it pretended to be. In coordination with the minister, they therefore decided to initiate
disciplinary proceedings against Junghahn on the basis of the 1898 Prussian law “concerning
the disciplinary relationships of private lecturers at state universities (Landesuniversitäten).”58
Junghahn, however, did not await the outcome of these proceedings: like Griessmayer, he
preemptively resigned.59
4. Continuity through time: Adolf Miethe (1862-1927)
One of the scientists involved in the disciplinary proceedings against Junghahn was Adolf
Miethe, who had succeeded Vogel as holder of the chair in photochemistry and spectroscopy
in 1899. Miethe had not been the first choice of either the Prussian education ministry or
Vogel’s colleagues, who had hoped to lure the photochemists Josef Eder or Eduard Valenta
away from Vienna. Moreover, when introducing Miethe as a possible alternative to Eder and
Valenta, the Department of Chemistry and Metallurgy indicated that Miethe, who had risen to
the position of technical director at Voigtländer & Sohn in Braunschweig, might not want to
settle for an academic salary.60 In fact, Adolf Miethe would later admit that the basic wage
17
offered to him “as a favor”—the same 6500 marks/year Vogel had earned at the end of his
career—had been rather low by his industrial standards.61 Nevertheless, Miethe accepted the
position, doubtlessly taking into account prospective salary raises, the additional income he
would derive from student fees, and, last but not least, the social status and prestige associated
with a Charlottenburg professorship. In fact, Miethe proved highly skilled in gaining social
capital, in part by establishing supportive working relationships with his colleagues and
supervisory authorities, even including Kaiser Wilhelm II.62 Significantly, no more than five
years after his joining the TH Charlottenburg, at the age of 42, Miethe was elected as the
institute’s president. By 1905 he had also been appointed privy councilor (geheimer
Regierungsrat), included in Prussia’s Order of the Red Eagle, and awarded a knight’s cross by
the French president—the first of a whole series of honorary titles and memberships granted
to Miethe for the provision of services related to his professorship. Vogel, by comparison,
received far fewer such honors and had to wait a much longer period of time.63
In light of these differences between Vogel and Miethe, certain continuities are all the more
notable. Miethe, for example, had initially imagined his “new life to consist of the diligent
uniform work of an academic researcher and teacher”; however, he rapidly found out that he
was expected to dedicate a substantial part of his time to a diverse range of extramural
activities.64 As with Vogel, these engagements on the one hand included public services such
as the organization and evaluation of international technology exhibitions and the
participation in scientific expeditions. On the other hand, Miethe closely collaborated with
industrial clients as a consultant, while also pursuing additional commercial work as a
patentee and scientific entrepreneur.
A 1910 complaint to the then education minister, August von Trott zu Solz, prompted Miethe
to highlight the relationship between his consulting and educational activities. The former
cavalry captain Martin Kiesling charged that Miethe had purposefully not involved him in the
organization of the German photographic exposition at the Brussels world’s fair so as not to
harm his own relationship with the optical firm C.P. Goerz, with whose leadership Kiesling
had fallen out. More specifically, Kiesling claimed that Miethe had acted unethically by
favoring the interests of a company (Goerz) on whose supervisory board the Charlottenburg
professor sat as a technical expert. In response, Miethe first of all noted that he could not
remember that anyone had suggested letting Kiesling join the organization committee. But he
immediately added that he would have objected if that had happened, because Kiesling
“effectively belongs to the type of persons who are not very much liked by the photographic
18
industry.” Moreover, Miethe emphatically denied that he had any interest in Goerz “beyond
the firm’s scientific works,” while at the same time acknowledging that he actively
participated in these science-related activities, as well as in those of other optical firms.
Miethe in fact argued that his ties with these companies were necessary to fulfill his duties as
a teacher. More specifically, he wrote that “without them it would be impossible to do justice
to all modern accomplishments in the field of photographic optics in my lectures on the
subject,” or to explain the origins and management of these innovations to his students.
Because of this link with his educational activities, Miethe had “a substantial interest in the
maintenance of undisturbed relationships with the optical firms Goerz, Zeiss, Steinheil,
Voigtländer, etc.” His argumentation was accepted by the minister.65
In the following year, however, a new complaint revealed that Miethe did not in fact refrain
from taking a financial stake in companies with which he collaborated. As Elizabeth Vaupel
has demonstrated, Miethe’s interest in the object of the criticism, synthetic gemstones, can be
traced back to at least 1904. In that year, the French chemist Auguste Verneuil published a
crystal-growth process enabling the manufacture of large ruby single crystals. Miethe, who
was especially curious about synthetic gems’ optical characteristics, experimented with the
“Verneuil process” at the TH Charlottenburg, in collaboration with his assistant Erich
Lehmann. In late 1906 Miethe, Lehmann, and Hermann Wild, an innovative gem merchant,
could convince the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG) to invest in the development
of the technology. This happened at the Elektrochemischen Werke Bitterfeld, in which AEG
had a majority interest, as well as at the newly created Deutsche Edelstein-Gesellschaft.66
Miethe provided technical advice to both of these firms and also countered reservations about
synthetic gemstones in popularizing articles. One of these pieces led to an anonymous
complaint to Miethe’s supervisory authorities, alleging that Miethe had been biased in favor
of the Deutsche Edelstein-Gesellschaft as a result of his close association with the company
and his “doubtless stake in its profits.” An “expert opinion” (Gutachten) by Miethe in the
Berliner Tageblatt indeed stressed that “especially the Deutsche Edelsteingesellschaft had
achieved excellent results” in producing synthetic spinels. The article also stated that, partly
thanks to the use of “certain chemical additives which are obviously kept secret,” the
synthetic alexandrite gemstones of the Deutsche Edelstein-Gesellschaft were “remarkably
superior to the natural [alexandrite] stones in terms of beauty, shine, hardness and fieriness.”67
Buyers would, however, have to pay a premium over the cost of other synthetic gems as
“[t]heir production is […] so difficult.” In his reaction to the education ministry, Miethe
19
acknowledged his financial interest in the Deutsche Edelstein-Gesellschaft without revealing
the scope of it: he indicated that the firm „had originally been a G.m.b.H. [society with
limited liability] and had bought my invention in exchange for a stock participation. This
participation was not increased when the large A.G. [stock corporation] was founded.” Above
all, though, Miethe maintained that the protester had not dared to reveal his identity because
he “most likely” was among the business rivals against whom the Deutsche EdelsteinGesellschaft had initiated unfair competition proceedings to retaliate for a “newspaper war”
against it. In this instance, too, Miethe’s response seems to have settled the matter for the
minister as there are no indications that a further investigation took place.68
Miethe was also not sanctioned for recommending eyeglasses produced by the SanoscopGesellschaft of Berlin in statements of 1912 and 1920, at which the Association of Hamburg
Opticians took offence. Unlike the previously discussed communications of Vogel,
Griessmayer, and Junghahn, these messages were not obviously identifiable as
advertisements. However, they seemed to the support the claim that Sanoscop’s eyeglasses
offered protection against ultraviolet radiation, which the firm’s Hamburg competitors
regarded as “humbug of the worst kind.” Accordingly, these opticians requested the Prussian
education minister, Konrad Haenisch, to take steps to ensure that “such completely
unobjective activities on the part of a civil servant will not happen again in the future.”69 The
Hamburgers thus raised a problem to which, as we have seen, the education ministry was
generally sensitive. However, the provision of expert opinions could also be considered part
of the duty of the Technische Hochschulen to critically assess the value of technologies to
which German citizens and firms might be exposed. 70 In addition, the absence of formal
requirements to disclose real or potential conflicts of interests may have further complicated
the tricky task of categorizing statements as “objective” or “biased.”
At the same time, Miethe’s experience suggests that German firms’ ability to pay for such
communications declined in the harsh economic climate of the post-World War I years. In
October 1920 Miethe supported a request for a salary raise in part by referring to the “current
state of the photochemical industry, whose economic decline has, as is well-known, taken on
the worst forms.” In combination with the “substantial expansion of my employment duties,”
this industrial crisis had caused “a corresponding decrease of my extra income
(Nebeneinnahmen).” The minister’s agreement to increase Miethe’s basic salary from 15,300
marks/year to the maximum amount of 18,000 marks provided no more than temporary relief:
despite a peak in his inventive activity—Miethe successfully applied for at least five patents
20
in the following years—his financial situation had deteriorated further by the fall of 1923. As
he indicated to Otto Boelitz, the then minister, his income did not suffice to take proper care
of his ailing mother. In fact, according to Miethe’s later recollections, he could not even
afford to travel by tram to the Technische Hochschule or to cover the cost of heating his house
in Berlin-Halensee, which he and his family hence exchanged for a smaller home. Miethe
therefore asked Boelitz for a further raise, but to no avail.71
In the aftermath of World War I, and particularly in the years of hyperinflation, it also proved
extremely challenging for Miethe to manage the expenditures of the photochemical
laboratory. Miethe had made the renovation of Vogel’s laboratory a condition for accepting
his deceased colleague’s chair and, in the decade before 1914, had been able to expand his
research program with only scant attention to issues of cost. This had been possible thanks to
easily obtainable public funds and a large philanthropic donation by Carl Alexander von
Martius, the former head of Agfa. As a result, the photochemical laboratory had become “one
of the best-equipped work places in Berlin in relation to its size and duties.”72 However, like
Miethe’s own savings, these resources withered away in the 1921-24 context of
hyperinflation. It was only through the financial assistance of Henry Goldman, the wealthy
germanophile of the Goldman-Sachs family, that Miethe could keep his lab running.73
Economic conditions had, however, improved considerably by the time Miethe started the
most contentious techno-scientific endeavor of his career, concerning nothing less than the
production of gold. The undertaking was the indirect result of a request by a local electrical
inventor, Arnold Jaenicke, for an expert opinion. More specifically, in early 1924 Jaenicke
and his business associates engaged Miethe to evaluate the light yield of a mercury-quartz
lamp of Jaenicke’s design against the yields of similar lamps that Miethe had been using in
cinematographic and other investigations. As part of the ensuing experiments, Miethe and
Hans Stammreich, a talented young collaborator in the photochemical laboratory, detected
tiny amounts of gold in a chemical precipitation formed within Jaenicke’s device. In view of
the very small quantity of gold and the high cost of the equipment used, Miethe considered
the discovery of scientific rather than practical value. Indeed, as Miethe believed to have
demonstrated the possibility of transmuting one chemical element (mercury) into another
(gold)—a change that even his critics regarded as theoretically plausible due to these
elements’ similar atomic structures—he expected that a new stage in the development of
chemical science was about to begin.74 At the same time, though, the idea that the discovery
might at some point be turned into a commercially viable process for manufacturing gold
21
stimulated Miethe to secure patent protection, as he had done multiple times before. 75 He and
Stammreich were in fact granted a German patent for their work, and several more patents
would follow after they joined forces with Siemens & Halske to further examine and develop
the process. The controversial nature of their endeavors had, however, nothing to do with
Miethe’s decisions to secure exclusive property rights over publicly funded research and to
collaborate with an industrial corporation which restricted his freedom to publish subsequent
findings. 76 Instead, once again the main concern was about reputational harm to the TH
Charlottenburg, as well as to the German scientific community more generally and to two
other chemists—Karl Hofmann and especially Fritz Haber—in particular. Miethe and
Stammreich had acknowledged the support they had received from Hofmann and Haber, a
towering figure in the German chemical community, in a 1924 article in Naturwissenschaften,
thus unintentionally associating their colleagues’ names with their sensational findings.
Already before the appearance of this paper, some of Miethe’s fellow professors at the
Technische Hochschule had advised him to forego publication because of the scientific and
media backlash that was likely to follow if Miethe’s and Stammreich’s claims would prove
incorrect. Afterwards colleagues blamed Miethe for “an unworthy advertising addiction
(Reklamesucht) and for behaving inappropriately for a professor.” To be sure, there were also
scientific objections against the study—particularly that the mercury-quartz used must have
been contaminated—but these seemed completely unfounded to Miethe. When completing his
memoirs in 1926, a year before his death, Miethe was still fully convinced of the validity of
his interpretation. Apparently, he was not aware that Fritz Haber and others were raising
further doubts about the purity of the starting material in a new series of papers that was about
to appear.77
5. Concluding remarks
Was the stress on reputational issues among the colleagues and employer of Miethe and
Vogel peculiar to Prussia or Germany? Or was it more generally characteristic of higher
education institutions’ attitude towards commercialization in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries? A possibility that needs to be explored in more depth is that this focus
was a flip side of the extensive engagement of German science and technology professors in
the provision of expert opinions, whose effectiveness depended on them appearing impartial.
In a study of academia-industry relationships pertaining to refrigeration technology, HansLiudger Dienel has supported this hypothesis by contrasting Germany to the United States. He
suggests that American companies had relatively little to gain from requesting professors
22
technology evaluations, as the individuals they could have approached lacked the “aura of
incorruptible neutrality and objectivity” necessary to exploit their statements for advertising
purposes. Other studies, however, indicate that the use of expert opinions in corporate
publicity outside of Germany was both common and contentious in fields other than
refrigeration technology, including in the U.S.78 In any case, it is notable that the supervisory
authorities of other academic scientists who commercialized photographic knowledge
expressed a broader range of concerns than the Prussian education ministry. In the 1890s, for
example, Columbia College’s trustees and its president Seth Low took very seriously the
charge that Charles Chandler’s extensive consulting work for firms in the photographic
industry, among many other sectors, negatively affected his performance as a teacher,
researcher, and administrator at the School of Mines. And the Belgian government’s
administrator-inspector at the State University of Ghent, where Baekeland and Guequier had
established a photochemical company in the previous decade, likewise worried that the
educational and research contributions of a substantial number of its employees suffered
because of their involvement in extramural work. In addition, the administrator-inspector
observed that, besides creating time constraints, the private practices run by more than a
dozen members of the university’s faculties of medicine and law aroused the jealousy of local
lawyers and physicians who lacked an academic affiliation and the prestige associated with
it.79 This final complaint was also raised in other historical cases, but is relatively uncommon
in the contemporary debate on academic entrepreneurship. In contrast, the effects of
academics’ commercial engagements on their educational and research work continue to be
discussed extensively.80
In light of such reputational and other concerns, it is significant that Hermann Vogel and
Adolf Miethe both participated in a variety of commercial activities over a time span of more
than half a century. This continuity first of all provides further evidence that, not only after
but also before the second half of the twentieth century, the participation of academic
scientists in commercial work was not simply correlated to the available levels of public
funding for scientific research. As for Vogel, there are no indications that the replacement of
his modest facilities at the Industrial Academy—bluntly described as an “old rat-trap” by a
contemporary—with much better-equipped rooms at the TH Charlottenburg made him
dedicate less time to commercializing inventions in collaboration with business associates.81
Similarly, the availability of large research funds in the decade before 1914 did not keep
Miethe from accepting consulting assignments and corporate board memberships and from
23
taking a financial stake in the Deutsche Edelstein-Gesellschaft. Second, this continuity is also
notable in light of the changed economic environment, particularly the increased knowledgeand capital-intensiveness of the photographic and optical industries. In the first decades of his
career, Vogel had faced an uphill battle trying to convince professional photographers and
small photography firms of the commercial value of scientific research. By the time Miethe
joined the TH Charlottenburg, in contrast, large companies with in-house R&D facilities, such
as Agfa and C.P. Goerz, were dominating the sector. These firms’ investments in internal
R&D did not prevent them from engaging the services of academic scientist-consultants.
Rather, the knowledge and resources generated by these efforts created new opportunities for
cooperation, which could be beneficial to both sides. 82 Moreover, unlike what Carsten
Reinhardt and Anthony Travis have written with regard to synthetic organic chemicals, the
rise of a knowledge- and capital-intensive photographic industry did not fundamentally alter
the balance between Vogel’s and Miethe’s commercial activities as consultants, patentees,
and entrepreneurs. In their analysis of academic-industrial partnerships between Badische
Anilin- & Soda-Fabrik (BASF) and chemists such as Adolf Baeyer (1835-1917) and August
Bernthsen (1855-1931), Reinhardt and Travis suggest that the chemist-entrepreneur largely
disappeared from the German academic landscape in the late nineteenth century. They point
out that chemists of previous generations, including Justus Liebig, Hermann Kolbe, and
August Hofmann, had actively participated in the creation and promotion of new industrial
companies in the course of their university employment. However, after the year 1860, which
they claim to be the turning point, “chemists and entrepreneurs […], particularly those
interested in dyestuff manufacture, were prevented from founding enterprises, because either
there was little room for new openings or insufficient capital to permit the sort of
sophisticated research and development that might lead to novel products and processes.”83
Contrary to this argument, the experiences of Vogel and Miethe show that the emergence of
large technology-intensive corporations also provided new means of support for
entrepreneurial academic chemists. As I have demonstrated, Vogel’s Gesellschaft für
Naturfarbenlichtdruck could sell out to an incumbent firm before its three-color print process
had even moved beyond the experimental stage, thus seemingly anticipating a business model
adopted by many start-ups in biotechnology and other high-tech fields since the late twentieth
century.84 And Miethe enabled the establishment of the Deutsche Edelstein-Gesellschaft by
bringing in the electrical giant AEG as an investor and partner, as his engineering colleague
Alois Riedler had done previously to commercialize express pumps (see Wolfgang König’s
contribution to this special issue).
24
Finally, as for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century academic scientists’ motives for
engaging in commercial work, my analysis points to the need to reconsider the importance of
financial reasons in relation to the employment conditions at the higher education institutions
in question.85 At first glance the fact that Vogel and Miethe continued to pursue commercial
activities after their academic salaries had been increased to relatively large levels might seem
consistent with previous researchers’ conclusion that monetary motives were of secondary
significance to many academic scientist-consultants. However, irrespective of their salary
scales, Vogel and Miethe just found it obvious to supplement their academic income with
other sources of revenue, whether public or private. Vogel was acutely aware that the extra
money thus gained could help him establish a name for himself; Miethe argued that the crisis
of the German photographic industry in the early 1920s necessitated a salary raise.
Unfortunately, a lack of sources makes it impossible to determine how large a share of
Vogel’s and Miethe’s total incomes stemmed from their extramural work. Despite their wide
range of sources of income, it is clear that Vogel and Miethe never became as affluent as
another photographic patentee and consultant identified in this article, their departmental
colleague Otto Witt. Partly relying on his ties with large corporations such as Agfa and BASF,
Witt moved into a “palacelike” mansion in Berlin-Westend in 1895 and began to cultivate a
luxurious lifestyle. Miethe’s memoirs reveal some sympathy for a colleague’s view that
Witt’s conspicuous display of wealth was inappropriate for a professor.86 Nevertheless, like
Vogel, Miethe also depended on extra-academic earnings to match a culturally prestigious
occupation with corresponding levels of material comfort.
Appendix 1: Nineteenth-century photography courses at higher education institutions in
Austria, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States87
Institution
Year of
introduction
Teacher(s)
25
King’s College, London
1856
Royal School of Military Engineering in
Chatham, Kent
1856
École des ponts et chaussées, Paris
1857
University of Leipzig
Royal Industrial Academy, Berlin
University of Vienna
1858
1863
1864
Polytechnic Institute of Vienna
1868
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1869
Dresden Polytechnic
Cornell University
Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg
1870
1876
1879
École des arts décoratifs, Paris
University of Berlin
1880
c.1880
Regent Street Polytechnic, London
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe
School of Mines, Columbia College, New
York
Technische Hochschule Hannover
1882
1887
1887
c.1887
Technische Hochschule Braunschweig
c.1890
Conservatoire des arts et métiers, Paris
1891
Maine State College, Orono
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Technische Hochschule Munich
Royal Academy of Art and School of Arts and
Crafts, Leipzig
University of Bonn
1891
1891
c.1891
1893
Heinrich Kayser (until 1894)
Friedrich Paschen (from 1895)
Max Müller
Carl Koppe
Alphonse Davanne
Léon Vidal
Albert Londe
David Wilder Colby
A.B. Stevens
Max Thomas Edelmann
Georg Aarland
1894
Heinrich Kayser
1889
T. Frederick Hardwich (1856-60)
Thomas Sutton (1861)
George Dawson (from 1862)
Henry Schaw (until 1864)
R.M. Parsons (1864-66)
Richard Hugh Stotherd (1866-73)
William de Abney (1871-77)
Louis Robert (1858-72)
Alphonse Davanne (1872-86)
Lucien Bordet (from 1886)
Heinrich Adolph Weiske
Hermann Vogel
Wilhelm Burger (1863-67)
Hugo Hinterberger (from 1896)
Emil Hornig (1868-69)
Josef Eder (from 1880)
John Adams Whipple
William Henry Pickering
Hermann Krone
George Moler
Hermann Vogel (until 1898)
Adolf Miethe (from 1899)
Léon Vidal
Heinrich Kayser (until 1885)
Gustav Fritsch (from 1885)
Howard Farmer
William Bell
Fritz Schmidt
Charles Chandler
Appendix 2: Photography firms (co)founded by academic scientists, 1880-190088
Academic
scientist
Bruno Meyer
Institution
Firm
Technische
Photographic studio
Year of
founding
Ca. 1880
Field of activity
Production and selling
26
Leo Baekeland
& Jules
Guequier
William K.
Burton
Hermann Vogel
& Ernst Vogel
Georges
Demenÿ
Hochschule
Karlsruhe
State University of
Ghent
Imperial
University, Tokyo
Technische
Hochschule
BerlinCharlottenburg
Collège de France
Arthur Noyes & Massachusetts
Willis Whitney Institute of
Technology
of art-historical slide
series
Commercialization of
new type of
photographic dry plate
Production and selling
of photographic dry
plates
Dr. Baekelandt et
Compagnie
1887
Tsukiji Kampan Seizo
Kaisha (Tsukiji Dry
Plate Manufacturing
Company)
Gesellschaft für
Naturfarbenlichtdruck
1888
1891
Commercialization of
three-color collotype
printing process
Société Générale du
Phonoscope
1892
Partnership with
American Aristotype
Company
1898
Commercialization of
“phonoscope,” a
chronophotographic
projector
Recovery of
photographic solvents
1
Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (hereafter GStaPK), I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III
Nr. 9, Bd. 3, Bl. 382-88. My translation from the German. See also Kändler, Anpassung und Abgrenzung, 251252.
2
See Reports with analyses on the Apollinaris Spring, Neuenahr, Rhenish Prussia, Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Print. Office, 1878 (quote from p. 2).
3
Marcovich and Shinn, “Regimes of Science Production and Diffusion”; and editors’ introduction to this special
issue.
4
Gillespie, The Early American Daguerreotype.
5
Auger, “Le régime de recherche utilitaire du professeur-consultant,” 353-354; Boudia, “The Curie Laboratory”;
177; Sanderson, “The Professor as Industrial Consultant”; Tweedale, “Geology and Industrial Consultancy.”
6
Dienel, “Professoren als Gutachter,” 177; Sanderson, “The Professor as Industrial Consultant,” 587-588. In
contrast, the academic chemist-consultant William Ramsay “was always looking for new ways in which to earn
money,” see Watson, “The Chemist as Expert,” 149.
7
Auger, “Régime de recherche utilitaire”; Gingras, Malissard, and Auger, “Conditions d’émergence des ‘conflits
d’intérêts’”; Mirowski, Science-Mart.
8
Gingras, Malissard, and Auger, “Conditions d’émergence des ‘conflits d’intérêts’”; and above, p. 23. For a
similar objection concerning agricultural research, see Rosenberg and Steinmueller, “Engineering Knowledge,”
1132.
9
Auger, “Régime de recherche utilitaire”; Sanderson, “The Professor as Industrial Consultant,” 598.
10
Marsch, Zwischen Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft, 63; Reinhardt and Travis, Heinrich Caro, chapter 7; Johnson,
„Academic-Industrial Symbiosis in Chemical Research,” and additional literature cited therein. More generally,
revisionist studies of industrial research have stressed that even corporations with large in-house laboratories
heavily relied on the knowledge and know-how of their customers and suppliers, as well as of outside
researchers and inventors. See the editors’ introduction in Clarke, Lamoreaux, and Usselman eds, The Challenge
of Remaining Innovative.
11
MacLeod, “Reluctant Entrepreneurs.”
12
Kändler, Anpassung und Abgrenzung; Späth, „Die Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg.”
13
I would like to thank Wolfgang König for bringing the records of the Prussian Kultusministerium to my
attention, as they have proved to be an unusually rich source for examining the commercialization of academic
science.
27
See Bancroft, “The Electrochemistry of Light,” 259-261; Ciamician, “The Photochemistry of the Future,” 390;
and Plotnikov, Lehrbuch der Photochemie, 92-97.
15
E.g., the écoles industrielles in Belgium. See Eder, “Die Photographie als Schuldisziplin,” and Warnerke,
“Photographic Technical Instruction on the Continent of Europe.”
16
Eder, Photographie als Wissenschaft; Hentschel, „Scientific Photography,” 107-108 (quote from latter
source).
17
Anthony & Co. to Chandler, 1 April 1887, in Charles F. Chandler Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University, box 241, folder 3. Chandler became the journal’s editor in 1884, see Marder, Marder, and
Duncan, Anthony, 201. The sum of $500 has been converted from 1887 to 2015 U.S. dollars via
www.measuringworth.com, using the Purchasing Power Calculator (accessed Aug. 2016). As Reese Jenkins has
pointed out (Images and Enterprise, 165), most of the actual editorial work was done by Chandler’s former
student Arthur Elliott.
18
Eder, “Geschichte der Erfindung der Chlorsilbergelatine,” 856; Gillespie, “Draper and Early Scientific
Photography,” 245; Jenkins, Images and Enterprise, 146 and 165; Mauersberger, „Hermann Krone,” 181;
Mercelis, „Entrepreneurial Incentives for Not Patenting,” 67-69; and Pritchard, “Rouch, William White.”
Multiple advertisements quoting product endorsements by Schmidt are included in Gale Cengage’s nineteenthcentury photography database (accessed Aug. 2016).
19
Abney, “Improvements in Photo-Mechanical Printing”; Ward, “Abney.”
20
Kayser, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 95-96.
21
See correspondence between Moler and Theodore Bryant in George S. Moler Papers, Rare and Manuscript
Collections, Cornell University Library.
22
Eder, “Method of Protecting Against Light of Short Wave Length”; Lüppo-Cramer, “Biographie von Eder,”
1047. See also Austrian patents nos. 93,080 and 93,083 and German patent no. 379,699. In 1933 Eder and
radiologist Leopold Freund of the University of Vienna requested patent protection of a related invention. See
Eder and Freund, “Lichtschutzmittel.”
23
See letters, Samuel Stratton to Eder, 16 January, 21 April 1920, 8 June 1921, William Ford Upson to William
Meggers, 18 March 1920, and Meggers to Eder, 12 May 1920 and 20 January, 28 March 1922, in William F.
Meggers Papers, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, box 1, folder 2-4.
24
Servos, Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling, 109-111; Wise, Willis R. Whitney. Another MIT
professor, the electrical engineer Harold Edgerton, established a consulting firm in 1931 to commercialize his
work in stroboscopic photography (see Roberts, Entrepreneurs in High Technology).
25
On Baekeland and Guequier, see Mercelis, „Learning from Entrepreneurial Failure.” On Meyer, see
Papenbrock, „Der Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte in Karlsruhe,” 181; GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III
Nr. 9, Bd. 3, Bl. 6-10; and „Helios.” On Demenÿ and Marey, see Braun, Picturing Time (especially pp. 180183). As a further example, in 1887 the British sanitary engineer William K. Burton co-founded a dry plate
manufacturing company while continuing his activities as a professor at Imperial University in Tokyo. See
Tucker et al., History of Japanese Photography, 335.
26
Reinhardt and Travis, Heinrich Caro, 216; Wentzel, Memoirs of a Photochemist, 11. Other nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century examples of such patentees are the mathematician Joseph Petzal (University of Vienna),
Vogel, Miethe, and Miethe’s collaborators Arthur Traube and Erich Stenger (TH Charlottenburg).
27
Edgerton, “Industrial Research in the British Photographic Industry”; Hercock and Jones, Silver by the Ton,
52.
28
Within his own Department of Chemistry and Metallurgy, Vogel had troubled relationships with Carl
Liebermann (organic chemistry), Friedrich Rüdorff (inorganic chemistry), and Rudolf Weber (chemical
technology); see GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 3, Bl. 298 and Bl. 308-313, and Miethe,
Lebenserinnerungen, 185.
29
Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 115-119 and 185-186 (quote from 186). The most comprehensive accounts of
Vogel’s career are Herneck, Vogel, and especially Röll, Vogel. Röll’s study is exceptional in its attention for
Vogel’s commercial engagements; however, his analyses are often one-sided as he strongly relied on Vogel’s
own journal, Photographische Mitteilungen, as a source of information. For more biographical information on
Miethe, see Helmut Seibt’s introduction to Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, and the memoirs themselves.
14
28
On the “Lunden affair,” see GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 2, Bl. 347-48, and Bd. 3, Bl.
6-17 and Bl. 55-64. Somewhat similarly, a conflict between Vogel and government building officer (Baurat)
Rudolf Stüve over the design of the photochemical laboratory at the TH Charlottenburg escalated to the point
where Stüve charged Vogel with having intentionally flooded his own rooms and Vogel initiated a libel action.
31
GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 4, Bl. 211-233; Hoerner, Das photographische Gewerbe
in Deutschland, 101 and 104; Herneck, Vogel, 30; and Röll, Vogel, 21.
32
Vogel, “Dr. Vogel’s neues Photometer für den Pigmentdruck (Kohledruck).”
33
“Answers to Correspondents”; “Dr. Vogel’s Photometer,” 161-163; “The American Carbon Manual”;
Photographic Society of Philadelphia, “Minutes 1 April 1868,” 172. Like Vogel, Swan and Edward Wilson, who
was both John Hood’s business partner and the editor of the Philadelphia Photographer, were committed to the
development of carbon photography.
34
“Dr. Vogel’s Photometer,” 185.
35
“Answers to Correspondents”; Jacobsen, “Sitzung vom 19. Juli 1867,” 115- 116; Marowsky, “Sitzung vom 18.
Oktober 1867,” 197.
36
Schrank, “Die Entwicklung des Kohleverfahrens,” 36-8.
37
Berger, “Photography Distinguishes Itself”; Mercelis, “Public Knowledge and Private Enterprise.”
38
Röll, Vogel, 42-44 (quote from 43); and “Dr. Vogel’s Photometer und der Hamburger Bezirks-Verein.”
39
For further examples, see Hentschel, Mapping the Spectrum, 248-249 (“H.W. Vogel’s big spectrograph
[grosser Spectograph]”), and Herneck, Vogel, 41 (“Dr. Vogel’s neuer Silberprober”).
40
Röll, Vogel, 80; Vogel, “Process of Producing Photographic Emulsions.”
41
Fischer, Byk Gulden, 37-38; “Preparing Gelatine Plates in the Studio”; Pritchard, “Rouch, William White”;
Schwier, “Experiments with Carbonate of Silver Paper,” 292; and Vogel, “Dr. Vogel’s Emulsion.”
42
Herneck, Vogel, 40; Jenkins, Images and Enterprise; Mauersberger, „Hermann Krone,” 184; Röll, Vogel, 8081.
43
Röll, Vogel, 88-89; “Selections from our French and German Contemporaries,” 307; Vogel, “German
Correspondence”; Wood, “State Pension for Daguerre.”
44
Miethe, Dreifarbenphotographie nach der Natur, 6-7; Röll, Vogel, 89-94 and 98-103. As Röll describes, Agfa
delivered azalin to Vogel, who sold it in alcoholic solution to photographers and photographic manufacturers.
Agfa had also produced eosin for Vogel. Firms which marketed Vogel’s azalin plate include Joh. Sachs & Co. of
Berlin and Otto Perutz of Munich.
45
Röll, Vogel, 102.
46
GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 2, Bl. 106-112 (quotes from p. 106 and p. 109).
47
Röll, Vogel, 108-115; Schrank, “Kleine Mittheilungen”; Vogel, „Letter from Germany”; and obituaries of
Ernst Vogel in Hermann Wilhelm Vogel Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University (e.g.
Kaiserling, “Dem Gedächtnis Dr. Ernst Vogels”).
48
Copy of Vogel, „Die neue Farbenphotographie,” Berliner Tageblatt (2 Feb. 1896) in GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 89,
Nr. 20950, Bl. 56. See also Vogel, „Sensationelles,” and “Photography in Natural Colours.” Pächter was a
personal friend of Menzel, see Morton, Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Culture, 170-171.
49
Sipley (A Half Century of Color, 16) was told that Kurtz had paid the extravagant sum of $40,000—
approximately $1,070,000 in 2015 U.S. dollars—to engage Ernst Vogel as a consultant. Later historians of
photography have repeated this extremely high figure. Taft (Photography and the American Scene, 34) simply
wrote that Kurtz “spent his entire fortune” on color-reproduction experiments.
50
Brown, Contesting Images, 23; GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 4, Bl. 159-160; Scamoni,
„Erinnerung an die World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago,” 174; Schmidt-Bachem, Aus Papier, 514; Vogel,
“Letter from the World’s Fair,” 539; and Von der Hasenheide, “Berliner Nachrichten,” 125-127.
51
GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 3, Bl. 235-237 (quote from 237), and Bd. 4, Bl. 159-160.
52
On this argument, see Franzoni and Lissoni, “Academic Entrepreneurs”; Perkmann et al., “Academic
Engagement and Commercialisation”, and introduction to this special issue.
53
Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 143-145 (quote from 145); Röll, Vogel, 23.
54
Richard Anthony to Charles Chandler, 24 Nov. 1888, in Charles Chandler Papers, box 241, folder 3; and Röll,
Vogel, 41 and 85.
30
29
55
See GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 3, Bl. 177-78, 339, 381, 414 and 417, and Bd. 4, Bl.
5, 51, and 69. This is not to say that Vogel’s role in the commercial endeavor was not disputed. Other sources
make clear that he was strongly criticized for (allegedly) not giving proper credit to Emil Ulrich, most obviously
by substituting Ulrich’s name with his own in promotional materials. See, e.g., Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen,
216.
56
GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 1, Bl. 17-21.
57
This was H. & W. Patacky, the firm of the patent agents Hugo and Wilhelm Patacky.
58
This law, which specifically targeted the physicist Hermann Aron because of his affiliation with the Social
Democratic Party, infamously made it easier to dismiss Privatdozenten for “unpatriotic” behavior by giving them
the status of civil servants. On the requirement to consult with faculty on disciplinary measures, see Ringer, The
Decline of the German Mandarins, 141-142.
59
GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 7, Bl. 46-50, 179-180, 189-190, 208-211, and 217-222
(quote from 189-90).
60
The department made the same comment with respect to Ernst Vogel, one of the two other industry-based
scientists who had made it to its shortlist. It was not uncommon to offer industrial scientists a higher professorial
salary, see Kändler, Anpassung und Abgrenzung, 12.
61
Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 188.
62
The Kaiser took an interest in the development of color photography and repeatedly invited Miethe to lecture
on this topic. See GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 89, Nr. 20950, Bl. 77-80, 84-89, 107-110, and 150-154; and König,
Wilhelm II. und die Moderne, 17.
63
See Miethe’s correspondence with the education ministry in GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9,
Bd. 5 (volume unpaged); GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 6, Bl. 128; Kändler, Anpassung
und Abgrenzung; and Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen. Miethe was elected into the Order of the Red Eagle as a
knight of the fourth class. On Vogel, see GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 3, Bl. 222-225 and
235-237; and Herneck, Vogel, 78-79 and 94.
64
Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 195.
65
GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 7, Bl. 287-294. For more on Miethe’s close connections
with Goerz, see Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 239-249, and Bush, Ceragioli, and Stephani, “3-Lens Catadiptric
Camera by Bernhard Schmidt.” Georg Büxenstein & Co. was one of Miethe’s other consulting clients.
66
Vaupel, “Edelsteine aus der Fabrik.”
67
According to the anonymous objection, Miethe had failed to notify the public of the different chemical
compositions of natural and laboratory-produced alexandrite gemstones in previous communications.
68
GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 8, Bl. 52-63.
69
Vereinigte Inhaber Optischer Geschäfte to Konrad Haenisch, c. 30 August 1920, in GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb
Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 10 (volume unpaged).
70
Dienel, “Professoren als Gutachter, 176-177.”
71
See Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 258-260; letters of Miethe and president of TH Charlottenburg to the
education ministry, 1 October 1920 and 1 and 4 October 1923, and Otto Boelitz’ response to Miethe on 27
December 1923, in GStaPK, I. HA Rep. 76 Vb Sekt. 4 Tit. III Nr. 9, Bd. 10 (unpaged). On Miethe’s patents, see
Helmut Seibt’s biographical notes in Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 295-296, and Deutsches Patent- und
Markenamt, DEPATISnet.
72
Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 189. Similar mixes of public and private funding also supported other academic
laboratories created around the turn of the century at the TH Charlottenburg as well as at other German higher
education institutions. See Johnson, „Reshaping the Academic-Industrial Alliance,” and Kändler, Anpassung und
Abgrenzung, 110.
73
Ibid., 254-260. On Goldman, see also Cook, “Henry Goldman.” Goldman’s help was an indirect result of
Miethe’s agreeing to consult for Büxenstein, as this work made him acquainted with the entrepreneur Martin
Nordegg, who on his part brought Miethe’s research to the attention of Goldman.
74
Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 261-286; Stoltzenberg, Fritz Haber, 500-506; Szöllösi-Janze, Fritz Haber, 511
and 526; Schwankner, “Verspätete Alchimie.” Miethe’s and Stammreich’s findings were extensively discussed
in the journals Naturwissenschaften and Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie between 1924 and
1927.
30
75
Photographic inventions which Miethe had patented include a magnesium flash light, the use of isocyanine
dyes (especially ethyl red) in color-photographic plates, and a three-color camera which he commercialized in
collaboration with Bermphohl & Co.
76
Regarding the former point, Miethe himself writes that he agreed with Henry Goldman that, if the invention
would turn out to be profitable, it would be his duty to share earnings with the German state in light of its
support for his work. See Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 272.
77
See references above, note 74. Quotes from Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 271 and 277.
78
Dienel, „Professoren als Gutachter,” and Ingenieure zwischen Hochschule und Industrie, 524-552 (quote from
546); Huijnen, De belofte van vitamines; Okun, Fair Play in the Marketplace, chapter 10; Rasmussen, “Moral
Economy”; Sanderson, “The Professor as Industrial Consultant,” 596. Likewise, in her contribution to this
special issue, Anna Guagnini observes that the names of British academic scientists regularly appeared below
product endorsements. However, unlike with the just-mentioned studies, she found no indication that this
practice was controversial. In contrast, as Guagnini points out, the conflicting testimony provided by scientific
expert witnesses in lawsuits was perceived as a serious problem in both England and the United States (see
Golan, Laws of Men and Laws of Nature).
79
Larson, Chandler, chapter 15; and Gustave Wolters to Frans Schollaert, 22 May 1896, in Ghent University
Archives, 4 A2/4, box 66, folder 20 (1895-1896).
80
For historical examples, see Dienel, “Professoren als Gutachter,” 171; Gingras, Malissard, and Auger,
“Conditions d’émergence des ‘conflits d’intérêts’” ; and Rosenberg and Steinmueller, “Engineering
Knowledge,” 1132. On the contemporary discussion, see, e.g., Daniel Erk and Marion Schmidt, „Nebenverdienst
von Professoren: Gelehrte Geschäftsleute” (Die Zeit, 29/2014); and „Nebenjob von Professoren: Dunkler
Zweitjob” (brand eins, 02/2014).
81
Ives, “A Note from Mr. Ives.”
82
Johnson, “Reshaping the Academic-Industrial Alliance”; Marsch, Zwischen Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft.
83
Reinhardt and Travis, Heinrich Caro, 178-179. On Liebig, Kolbe, and Hofmann, see Brock, Liebig; Rocke,
Quiet Revolution, 304-309; and Meinel and Scholz eds, Allianz von Wissenschaft und Industrie. It is curious that
Reinhardt and Travis regard the year 1860 as the turning point, although The Liebig Extract of Meat Company
was founded in 1865, Hofmann became a silent partner in Agfa (created 1867), and Kolbe’s venture into
industry did not happen until the mid-1870s. As Jeffrey Johnson describes, Hofmann’s assistant Ferdinand
Tielmann also combined the roles of entrepreneur and academic employee in the 1870s, thus contributing to the
creation of the synthetic perfumes industry. See Johnson, “Reshaping the Academic-Industrial Alliance,” 172.
84
Mirowski, Science-Mart, chapter 5.
85
On this point, see also Anna Guagnini’s contribution to this special issue.
86
Miethe, Lebenserinnerungen, 206 and 218; Noelting, Otto Nikolaus Witt, 1171; and Reinhardt and Travis,
Heinrich Caro, 216.
87
This table is based on Albertina, Biobibliografie zur Fotografie in Österreich; Albrecht, Technische
Hochschule Braunschweig; Blume, “Photomechanical Institute in Leipzig”; Boyd, “Photographic Instruction at
Cornell”; „Enseignement Photographique”; Eder, History of Photography, chapter 96; Frizot ed., Nouvelle
histoire de la photographie, 208; Hannavy (ed.), Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography; Hentschel,
Mapping the Spectrum and “Scientific Photography”; Hoerner, Das photographische Gewerbe in Deutschland,
92-112; Maine State College, Orono, “Annual Reports,” 39-41; Mauersberger, “Hermann Krone”; Pitts,
“William Bell,” 65; Stevens, “University of Michigan School of Photography”; Technische Hochschule
Hannover, Lehrkörper, 17 and 22; Vidal, “Cursus für industrielle Reproductionen”; Ward, School of Military
Engineering; and the yearly overviews of „Photographic Schools of Instruction” in the American Annual of
Photography. Because of the unfortunate lack of precise information available in the international literature, it
was beyond the scope of this article to also include nineteenth-century academic photography courses taught
outside of these five countries.
88
On sources used, see above, notes 24-25. The table does not include entrepreneurs who, like Hermann Krone
in Dresden, had started a photography business before joining higher education institutions as teachers and/or
researchers.
31
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