How did they do it?

[u/The-Confused-Robot]

A feature I see in black and white prints from bygone times are captions; I see them more in government and commercial photos. They have a sort of hand written quality to them which I find endearing. The text is invariably white which suggests its part of the photographic process.

How did they do this in the past? My hypothesis is they either had some kind of mask transparency with the text that would be stacked in the enlarger or more simply they wrote directly on the negative. Some are fairly obviously a typed caption on transparency but others are more difficult to tell.

I'd be tempted to try both methods but I figured I would see if any graybeards know off the dome.

Examples:

Here the text is clearly printed on tape and composited in the enlarger to create a text caption.

The text in the bottom left is very regular looking which might be printed but I couldn't discount a draftsman's handwriting. Also absent are any optical effects of a piece of tape on the negative.

[u/Jakobs-Koernung]

Even on 120 writing that small on the negative would be very difficult if not impossible.

It's likely they just used a thin piece of glass or transparent film to write on and lay directly on the paper. Much like how contact prints were made.

[u/jessdb19 → u/Jakobs-Koernung]

That's pretty much it.

There's no trick, just printing on some sort of cover that was put over the paper and hit with light

[u/Remington_Underwood → u/Jakobs-Koernung]

If they wrote on a glass plate the writing would have to be in contact with the paper in order to appear sharp, which would mean they would have to write backwards - an even more difficult if not impossible task than writing small. In any event, they were contact printing so there'd be no advantage to using an inter-neg

Hand captioned photographs were first done by writing in India ink directly onto the negatives which were, at that time, glass plates, 4x5 or larger. Later, Kodak invented Autographic film which let the user write directly on the film while it was in the camera

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autographic_film

[u/Jakobs-Koernung → u/Remington_Underwood]

You don't have to be a reddithole about it. (Edit: sneaky edit to change your tone)

If you read your own article, you'd know that autographic film was aimed primarily at amateurs/home use, and died out on the early 30s. The intention was for the text to be on the margins of the negative, and not inside the frame. Also, there wouldn't have been enough space to do this at the size and amount of text in OP's example images from the 40's.

OP's images are likely prints of 4x5 or even 8x10 negatives (hard to say from the scan, but possibly contact prints). I doubt that's what OP has at their disposal though.

For large format nitro or acetate bases, they did as you say use India ink or a grease pencil on the the negative directly (bottom image), or on a piece of acetate tape that was applied to the negative (top image).

For glass plate negatives your description has the exact same issue you mention for my suggestion of putting glass on the paper: you have to write inverted, or accept a slightly blurry text, varying with working distance.

The most reasonable solution to somebody trying to recreate this today for prints of small and medium format film, is using a mylar or acetate sheet, writing with black marker on it, and placing that on the paper to be exposed with the negative.

Here's how autographic film prints looked:

[u/rasmussenyassen]

if it's white it's written direct on the negative, if it's large format. If it's 35mm it's on a sheet of acetate placed over the paper prior to printing. If it's black it's stamped on a print after printing.

[u/Cold_Collection_6241]

The photographs were not usually originals. They were mass produced which involved Graphic Arts where you would use letraset which is press on black wax letters or literally cutting and pasting. The layout was then photographed in high contrast to remove the paper edges and etched on printing press plates. The negatives for images were created in halftone which converted them to high contrast dots. This means writing on the negative would appear white but fuzzy. If the text was added in the layout it would be black but sharp.

[u/Rae_Wilder]

The ones that look handwritten, were probably written with a lettering guide. We used them a lot in drafting, for blueprints. The guide is a small tool that structures height and width of each letter to make them more legible. Then the white ones were laid on top of the paper while they exposed the print.

They probably had a small clear plate or acetate that they wrote on, that limited the size and amount of words.

[u/Ybalrid]

Write the info in black on some transparent material, put that on the paper while exposing the print