Joe Gonsowski and other Old Judge experts will be able to give you many more details, but OJs and similar photographic cards consist of an albumen print glued to cardboard. Albumen prints were one of the first commercially viable methods for making many prints from a single photographic negative; the paper was very thin, so each print had to be individually glued to a piece of cardboard so it could be put in a cigarette package. Such prints could not be made on newsprint, which was used to print newspapers such as Harper's Weekly, and the technology to reproduce photographs on newsprint did not yet exist in the 1860s-1880s. So if they wanted a picture they had to use other technologies that were compatible with printing presses, such as woodcuts.
Last edited by trdcrdkid; 06-06-2019 at 10:25 AM.
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