I tried to give you an answer.

The problem is that there are no recent books on the subject because no
editor would dare publish such a book now for fear of not selling any,
other than to relatives of the author. There was one about 40 years ago,
but that author, while no doubt experienced at making printing plates, had
no fundamental scientific understanding of what was going on. His view was
that the crossline screen worked entirely by diffraction, which is not the
case, though diffraction is a factor, especially with the finer screens.

Similar to the case of Mees and James "Theory of the Photographic
Process". No books like this are likely ever to be written again. There is
just no demand for such stuff.

So unless you want to track down F.E.Ives' Bolt Court Technical School
lectures in London in the late 19th century (1898), The Journal of the
Franklin Institute in May 1888 (I have not read this, so it may describe
an earlier opto-mechanical process), or the Inland Printer article I cited
previously, you are out of luck.

If you are reasonably smart and understand geometric optics, you can
re-invent the ruled crossline screen and, realizing each aperture is a
pinhole of a pinhole camera and the lens of the copy camera or enlarger is
the subject, and that litho film is clear for less than a certain
exposure, and opaque at greater exposures.

Well, I won't tell you you're a turd, because I'm really not very good
at that sort of thing.  And I can't give you a 1950s reference -- but if
you'll settle for 1960s, try to find a suitable copy of Encyclopedia
Americana.  The major article in that tome on photography illustrates
the energetics of latent image formation and development about as well
as anything that doesn't require an advanced degree in photochemistry to
understand, to the point it was understood ca. 1963.  There might well
be better versions of this article in newer editions of the Americana,
but since I've never seen a newer edition, I can't say for certain -- I
do know, however, that the Americana we had at my school when I was in
5th grade was the 1963 edition, and had an exceptional article that was
completely understandable to a very bright ten year old, but technically
correct (to the science of the time) insofar as I've ever been able to
check it.

While you have the encyclopedia, it's very much worth your time to check
out the major article on Color by Edwin Land...

Ah!  That's what I thought you might have meant.  Here goes.

We'll deal with simple black-and-white photography first.

The film is coated with an emulsion made of gelatin with tiny crystals of
silver halides (silver iodide, silver bromide, and/or silver chloride)
embedded in it.

When exposed to light, the silver halide molecules go into a different
energy state.  Roughly speaking, one of the electrons changes orbit.  In
order for this to be useful it has to happen to several electrons in the
same crystal.

This enables the film to "remember" where the light hit it.  If you wait too
long, two things happen: some crystals start reverting to their original
(unexposed, low-energy) state, and some crystals go into the high-energy
state without being exposed to light.  That's why we always have doubts when
somebody wants to develop a 50-year-old roll of film they found in the
attic.

But back to the story.  The film is processed in developer, stop bath, and
fixer.

The developer is a chemical that reacts selectively with the crystals that
are in the high-energy state, turning them into metallic silver, which is
black.  Thus the film blackens where the light hit it, and not where the
light didn't hit it.  That's how you get a negative image.

The stop bath is simply a rinse with a small amount of acid in it to stop
the developer from working after it has had the right amount of time.

The fixer dissolves the silver halides that weren't turned into black
metallic silver.  This makes the image permanent (removes everything that is
still light-sensitive).

Then the film has to be washed, with or without chemicals (Perma Wash, etc.)
to help get it clean, because left to itself, the fixer would eventually
react with the black silver grains and bleach them.

That's how you get a negative.

To make a print, you take a sheet of paper with a very similar coating (but
less sensitive to light, because you're going to have a lot of light
available, and because you want to use a safelight when handling it).  You
simply project the negative onto the paper, then develop, stop, and fix the
paper.  A negative of a negative is a positive... and you have a picture.
The printmaking stage also allows you to adjust the overall brightness and
contrast of the picture.

If you want slides (positive images) from your film, the process is a bit
more complicated.  Basically: (1) expose; (2) develop; (3) instead of fixer,
use "bleach" (not Clorox!) to remove the developed silver grains, leaving
the un-exposed silver halide crystals in place; (4) "expose" the remaining
silver halide (either by exposing it to light or chemically) to put it all
into the high-energy state; (5) develop again; (6) fix.  This is called
reversal processing and gives you a film that is black where the light did
*not* hit it, i.e., a positive.  Black-and-white slides are uncommon
nowadays, but they can be made.

You want color?  OK, you need a more complicated process.  The film is in 3
layers for the 3 primary colors.  In each layer, the silver grains are
attached to chemicals ("dye couplers") which will form dyes of the
appropriate colors when the silver is developed.  So you develop in color
developer (forming dyes as well as a silver image), then "blix" (bleach and
fix, removing the undeveloped silver halides *and* the developed silver,
leaving only the dyes).

That gives you a color negative.  For technical reasons relating to the
characteristics of the dyes and the desire to use a dim orange safelight,
the negative also has an orange dye layer included.  It is used with color
printing paper that has very low sensitivity to orange light, and the orange
dye layer compensates for this.  Apart from that, color paper works like
color film.

If you want color slides, you use a reversal process with color couplers in
it.  (Or if it's Kodachrome, something much more complicated which I'll
leave for someone else to explain!)

Clear skies,
Michael Covington
Author, Astrophotography for the Amateur
www.covingtoninnovations.com/astromenu.html