photographic science, which has been taken up by others and continued to the present day. Companies were set up to manufacture photographic materials in the late 19th century in most industrialized countries, but it was George Eastman who initiated a remarkable change by establishing an industrial research laboratory supporting methods of mass production backed up by international marketing. In recent years, photographic and imaging science has expanded to include a wide variety of research topics related to digital imaging.

Early Conferences
In 1889 a World Exhibition was held in Paris and the French Ministry of Commerce organized the first International Congress of Photography (and incidentally an International Congress of Celestial Photography). Subjects discussed were those of international interest such as standardization and copyright in photographs. A permanent Commission was established and it was agreed to hold the next meeting in Brussels in 1891. This and the following meetings in Paris in 1900 and in Liege in 1905 all concerned themselves with similar topics of international interest. The fifth Congress, held in Brussels in 1910, marked a change of style. Although its scope was that of the whole of photography, experimental results were presented, and with the 1925 Congress in Paris the transition to consideration of applied and scientific photography was complete. It is worth noting that no less than 450 participants registered for the eighth International Congress held in Dresden in 1931. The next meeting in 1935 was held in Paris, and was the last of the series of meetings held under the auspices of the Permanent International Commission established in 1889.

After the war, a series of 'ad hoc' meetings of an international character were arranged which concerned themselves with photographic sensitivity. An exception was the Centenary Conference arranged by the Royal Photographic Society in its Centenary year (1953) which once again covered the whole spectrum of photographic interest. Subsequent meetings reverted to the more usual subject of photographic science, and it was at this stage that concern was expressed about the fact that these large international meetings were being held too frequently with little or no international co-ordination.

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