A Review of Russell Effect Phenomena and their Applications

Abstract

There have been many indications that peroxides, which can cause fading or microspot attacks on silver images, are a by-product of autoxidation. Peroxides can also produce latent fog on photographic emulsions stored in the dark. Russell observed fogging by many organic materials and by freshly abraded electro-positive metals. Treatment with a very dilute latent-image bleach can produce a great increase of this fog. Ammonia hypersensitization of a certain film gave enhanced sensitivity to Russell effect fogging. This has been used for non-destructive testing for conservation of museum samples.