Biography

John Trotter was born in Ceres in Fife, Scotland, on the 3^rd January 1862. His father John Trotter (senior) was a schoolteacher, his mother Christina (nee Graham) bore six children, John being the 3^rd. Between 1887 and 1889 John was an employee of George Mason & Co, a Slide manufacturer and leading photographic apparatus firm in Glasgow. It wasn’t long before he set out on his own.

John Trotter experimented with many disciplines throughout his life from X-ray apparatus, cinematography and electricity to colour photography and was one of the first people to show moving pictures in Glasgow. However, it is in the field of Optometry that John Trotter is most remembered. He was President of one of Scotland’s main optician organisations and was held in extremely high regard, often approached for consultation by members of the medical profession in particular with regards to diseases of the eye. John Trotter & Co Opticians first started trading in Glasgow towards the end of the 1800s, opening a second branch in Edinburgh around 1930. There is still a branch of the Opticians bearing the name Trotters in Edinburgh today, although Black and Lizars acquired the company in 2014.

John Trotter offered advice to not only the Ophthalmic establishment but to other areas of medicine in the West of Scotland, notably in the early days of x-rays. In 1895, on hearing of Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of x-rays so interested did he become in the subject that he constructed his own equipment in the basement of his shop. The first patients to be x-rayed were sent to his basement from the Glasgow Western and Victoria Infirmary, taken there by horse-drawn ambulance.

Trotter also worked with Walter Jamieson in 1898 on the Jamieson-Trotter torpedo, a wireless controlled torpedo, although it is unclear if it was ever fired in anger. Then in 1905 with Hugh Wright Thomson he helped develop the Skiascope, an instrument to aid with eye examinations. It seemed Mr Trotter devoted his life to improving others through his medical work, whilst simultaneously developing weapons of potential mass destruction.

It would be fair to say that John Trotter was a polymath, as he invented or developed a variety of other instruments from air flow speed meters to barometers and barographs.

He was an Ordinary Member of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow (now the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow) who’s mandate is “to aid the study, diffusion, and advancement of the arts and sciences with their applications, and the better understanding of public affairs”.

A secretary of the Natural History Society of Glasgow, Trotter gave numerous presentations using his own lantern equipment as well as advancements in lantern technology. It is in reference to lanterns and slides that John Trotter is best known in photographic circles. And despite his occupation being described as an Optician in the census of Scotland in 1891, and again in 1901 in the census of England and Wales, he founded his own company in 1890 manufacturing lanterns and slides which continued until his death in 1940.

(Incidentally he described himself as a Philosophical Instrument Maker in the census of Scotland in 1881 when he was only 19 years old)

John Trotter was reported in the British Journal Of Photography in May 13 1898 as being a photographic firm of leading importance and one worthy of a visit for those attending Glasgow’s Photo Convention that year.

In his free time, he was a motoring enthusiast in its very early days and he was a prominent member of the Royal Scottish Motor Yacht Club, in fact buying a property in Clynder on the Gare Loch so he could pursue his sailing passion more easily.

Glasgow Herald hailed him ‘An Optician and a Pioneer’ in his obituary on the 14 March 1940.

Researched and written for Craigdarroch Castle by Anthony Carr, May 12, 2020.

Biographical, key dates and other important information found on the Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource, lucerna.exeter.ac.uk
 

Other sources consulted by Mr. Carr for this biography:

Photography, The Journal for The Amateur, The Profession and the Trade, Volume III, Jan-Dec 1891

Proceedings and Transactions of The Natural History Society of Glasgow, Volume 1, Part 1, 1885. Volume 2, Part 1, 1888. Volume 3, 1888

Modern Magic Lanterns. A Guide to The Management of The Optical Lantern, For The Use of Entertainers, Lecturers, Photographers, Teachers, and Others. Illustrated by R. Child Bayley (Assistant Secretary to the Royal Photographic Society). By L. Upcott Gill, 1895

The British Journal of Photography, Volume 45, May 13, 1898

The Photographic News, A Journal For Amateur Photographers, A Weekly Record of The Progress of Photography, January 7 1898 and Volume XLII, January 1, 1899

The Electrical Trade, Vol IV, Chicago, ILL. September 1 1899, No.11

Proceedings of The Philosophical Society Of Glasgow, Volume 30, 1899

The Glasgow Herald, Thursday, March 14, 1940, p9

Unmanned Systems of World Wars I and II by H.R. Everett, 2015

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