Yes, many darkrooms started without electricity. Actually it is not needed. Contact printers and enlargers could perfectly use the day light. Lamps like this one were used for development of orthochromatic material. Even after the spread of electric energy, week-end photographers going to their country houses, or professionals on the road, could count on devices like that to their absolute autonomy.

Thinking about a lab without electricity:
A contact print with daylight is very easy to imagine how it could work. An enlarger not that much. So have a look on the following ads. The system using the camera (with a removed back) is an attempt to put the dark world in front of the lens and the bright one behind it. The developed negative is placed where usually we put unexposed film. Light passes through the lens in an unusual way: from the inside to the outside of the camera! They are advertising only the adapter where the camera is attached to: 'make enlargements of any size with your Kodak'. It should be set in one of darkroom's walls facing a lightful exterior. I don't think it is practical at all. To be able to get reasonable sizes (small ones) the bellows must be really extensible (unless a close-up lens is attached)

Well, the second proposed system is much more convenient to my understand. One just put the negative in one side, the paper in a holder with a blind on the other side (no need of a special place in the house to do that, just a dark one) and the lens is just perfect to project an enlarged image on the paper (or whatever) as soon as we turn the device to a source of light to lit the negative.

It is simple and anyone can do. That is why it is proposed as the enlarger for Brownies in the second ad: the everyone's camera.



published in The Photominiature #103 by Tennant and Ward. New York - December 1909



published in The Photominiature #134 by Tennant and Ward. New York - September 1914