Ricalton, James

James Ricalton (circa 1844 -1929) was a New Jersey school teacher, traveler, inventor, and photographer. His occasional work for Thomas Edison included traveling through Asia to discover bamboo plants suitable for light bulb filaments (1888-1889), and testing Edison's motion picture camera (1912). In 1891 he resigned from teaching to become a full-time photographer and war correspondent, working primarily for Underwood & Underwood. His books include India through the stereoscope (1900) and China through the stereoscope (1901).

From the description of [People of China]. [between 1899 and 1901] (Getty Research Institute). WorldCat record id: 82774580

In 1882 Elmer and Ben Underwood set up an office on Ottawa, Kansas to distribute Eastern photographers' stereographs to the Western market with door-to-door salesmen. By 1891, they had established a plant in Ottawa to manufature stereo photographic cameras, stereo views and stereoscopes; moved their headquarters to New York City, opened branch offices in Baltimore, New York, and Liverpool. By 1901, Underwood and Underwood was manufacturing packaged sets of stereo views--25,000 a day (more than seven million a a year), and 300,000 stereoscopes a year.

See Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, "Stereographs and Stereotypes: A 1904 View of Mormonism," Journal of Mormon History 18 (Fall 1992): 155-76.

From the guide to the Underwood and Underwood stereographs, bulk 1903-1905, 1903-1905, (L. Tom Perry Special Collections)