SEARSPORT – Until they invent a time machine, crystal-clear photographs made from glass plate negatives are the next best thing.

The Penobscot Marine Museum has recently taken ownership of more than 30,000 glass plate negatives made by the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Co. from 1909 to the 1950s and is now making the images available for suitable-for-framing prints.

A visit to the museum’s Web site devoted to the collection – glassplateimages.com – reveals the number of images available from towns in Maine.

Kevin Johnson, who worked on the collection when it was owned by the Rockport Institute of Photographic Education and now curates the negatives for the marine museum, said Belfast-based Eastern Illustrating made its money selling postcards.

The company employed five or six photographers each summer to travel around Maine and other New England states and in later years as far west as New York state. The company’s niche was small towns. Cities like Bangor, Portland and Boston would have had their own postcard businesses.

Some of the prints made from Eastern Illustrating’s 5-by-7-inch glass negatives are included in the PMM’s current exhibit at its art museum, “Through the Photographer’s Lens, Penobscot Bay and Beyond.” During a tour Monday, Johnson pointed out one print that shows a postcard shop in St. Stephen, N.B., probably from the 1910s. Postcard racks line the walls, a desk with an ink pot is ready for the next customer to pen a note, and there is even a mailbox on hand.

But in most small towns, the postcards probably would have been for sale in a general store.

The glass plate negatives produce incredibly sharp prints, not because it is a superior medium, Johnson said, but rather because of their condition.

“Their biggest advantage is their durability,” he said Monday.

The collection was moved from warehouse to warehouse in Belfast for years and survived a fire, and many disappeared – apparently taken as souvenirs. Then, near disaster. On a Sunday in February of this year, a sprinkler system in Rockport where the plates were stored leaked, and Johnson was summoned to save them.

“It really was a miracle,” he said, that almost all the plates were saved. He remembers hauling the heavy boxes of glass plates over an ice-covered floor, then working to keep the plates wet so they would not become “glued” together if the emulsion dried.

The collection is now stored in the museum’s library, and Johnson is doing the painstaking work of scanning and cataloging each plate. The only information included with the images is whatever may have been written on them, such as a town and street name, and possibly a date.

Eastern Illustrating employed girls to write the information, in reverse, on the plates.

Johnson knows of two other large collections of Eastern Illustrating images – each of about 20,000 – which are privately owned. There probably are smaller collections, perhaps a dozen or so glass plate negatives, around Maine, in boxes in attics and basements. The museum hopes to encourage owners of any plates to donate them to the central collection, where they can be digitally scanned, conserved and catalogued.

To purchase a print, Johnson can be contacted by e-mail at kevin@penobscotmarinemuseum.org, or by phone at 548-2529. A research fee, ranging from $10 to $25, is charged for a computer CD of the images from a particular town. That fee is then deducted from the price of a print.

The prints cost $25 for 8-by-10, $45 for 11-by-14, $60 for 16-by-20, and $250 for 30-by-40. The prints are mounted onto acid-free backing board. Johnson imagines customers buying the prints to hang in their living rooms or dens, bringing a bit of hometown history into the home. The largest format may be favored by restaurants, B&Bs or motels, he said.

The proceeds from the sale of prints will help keep the curating and cataloging work going, he said. The museum is seeking grants and donations to further underwrite the effort, which will take years.

Johnson will present a free slide show and lecture on the collection 6-8 p.m. Wednesday at the museum’s gallery on Main Street in Searsport next to the museum’s store. Slide shows and lectures are also scheduled in Belfast for Sept. 24 and in Searsport on Oct. 9, hosted by each community’s historical society.