1842                Address Unknown, Boston, Massachusetts.[1]

1842 Amateur & Inventor.in an article in discusses the Calotype process.

1851 February.  The Photographic Art Journal.  (New York, New York.) February 1851, Vol. 1, No. 2, P. 74 & 75

Researches on Light.  By Robert Hunt, Secretary to the Royal Polytechnic Society.  Part 1….P.65 to

…Mr. Channing of Boston appears to have been the first to publish [2]any method by which the calotype process could be simplified.  This gentleman directs that the paper be washed over with sixty grains of crystalized nitrate of silver in one ounce of water , and when dry, with a solution of ten grains of the iodide of potassium in one ounce of water.  It is then to be washed with water, and dried between blotting paper; it is now fit for use…

1853 April.  The Photographic Art Journal. (New York, New York.)  Vol. 5, No. 4, P. 216-220 

another article discusses in more detail. The Talbotype As Now Practiced And Its Modifications… on page 220 Channing’s modifications appear.

1901 March 21.  New York Times, (New York, New York.)  March 21, 1901 Obituary

Dr. William F. Channing.

Boston, March 20.—Dr. William Francis Channing, noted scientist and son of the philosopher, Dr. William Ellery Channing, and cousin of the late Rev. William Henry Channing, once Chaplin of the United States Senate, died at the Perry Hospital to-day.  He was taken with pneumonia on Washington’s Birthday, which was also the eighty-first anniversary of his own birth, and though the symptoms were favorable to his recovery, his advanced age stood in the way, and he was unable to rally from the weakening effects of the disease.

Dr. Channing was born in Boston and was graduated from Harvard in 1839, being a classmate of Dr. Edward Everett Hale.  He later took a course in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his diploma in 1844, but never practicing his profession.  Even while pursuing his studies he was engaged in active work of other sorts, for he   assisted in the first geological survey of New Hampshire, in 1841-2, and for two years following was associated with Dr. Henry I. Bowditch in the editorship of the Latimer Journal of Boston.

With Prof. Moses G. Farmer Dr. Channing worked for the ten years following 1841 in developing a fire-alarm telegraph and the apparatus, patented in 1857, is still in very general use.  Nine years later he patented a railroad for transporting ships overland and in 1877 invented a telephone, which was bough by the Bell Company.  He was a frequent contributor to scientific journals on electrical subjects and wrote the first books on electricity as applied to medicine.  Dr. Channing moved to Pasadena, Cal. Sixteen years ago for the benefit of his wife’s health.  She died there and he returned to Boston six months ago.

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[1] A Directory Of Massachusetts Photographers 1839-1900.

[2] A paper on Photographic Manipulation, in the American Journal of Arts and Sciences, July 1842.