In the kitchen of his widowed mother's boarding house Eastman tried various experiments, eventually developing a gelatin dryplate that could be processed later.
Beck was able to get his equipment down to about 30 pounds with the new dry-plate method, needing only an assistant or two to help carry the camera and a big wooden tripod up a mountain.
But eventually, each atom encounters a plate at a temperature lower than its boiling point, at which point it sticks to the plate, just as water freezes when poured on to dry-ice.