Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype (/dəˈɡɛr(i)ətaɪp, -r(i)oʊ-/; French: daguerréotype) process, or daguerreotypy, was the first publicly available photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s.The images formed by means of a camera obscura have been found too faint to produce, in any moderate time, an effect upon the nitrate of silver. To copy these images was the first object of Mr. Wedgwood in his researches on the subject, and for this purpose he first used the nitrate of silver, which was mentioned to him by a friend, as a substance very sensible to the influence of light; but all his numerous experiments as to their primary end proved unsuccessful.He sees difficulty with this proceeding by subscription; it is almost certain – just as I myself have been convinced ever since looking on my first specimens – that subscription would not serve. Everyone says it is superb: but it will cost us the thousand francs before we learn it and be able to judge if it could remain secret. M. de Mandelot himself knows several persons who could subscribe but will not do so because they think it would be revealed by itself, and now I have proof that many think in this way. I entirely agree with the idea of M. Arago, that is get the government to purchase this discovery, and that he himself would pursue this in the chambre. I have already seen several deputies who are of the same opinion and would give support; this way it seems to me to have the most chance of success; thus, my dear friend, I think it is the best option, and everything makes me think we will not regret it. For a start M. Arago will speak next Monday at the Académie des Sciences ...Inform party that Parliament has placed no funds(To) Miles Berry Esq 66 Chancery LaneIt is said that Daguerre has found the means to collect, on a plate prepared by him, the image produced by the camera obscura, in such a way that a portrait, a landscape, or any view, projected upon this plate by the ordinary camera obscura, leaves an imprint in light and shade there, and thus presents the most perfect of all drawings ... a preparation put over this image preserves it for an indefinite time ... the physical sciences have perhaps never presented a marvel comparable to this one.If the facade of a building, or a place, or a landscape is illuminated by the sun and a small hole is drilled in the wall of a room in a building facing this, which is not directly lighted by the sun, then all objects illuminated by the sun will send their images through this aperture and will appear, upside down, on the wall facing the hole.You will catch these pictures on a piece of white paper, which placed vertically in the room not far from that opening, and you will see all the above-mentioned objects on this paper in their natural shapes or colors, but they will appear smaller and upside down, on account of crossing of the rays at that aperture. If these pictures originate from a place which is illuminated by the sun, they will appear colored on the paper exactly as they are. The paper should be very thin and must be viewed from the back.Directions for the use of the new daguerreotype apparatus for the making of portraits, executed according to the calculations of Professor Petzval by Voigtländer and Son, Vienna, printed by J.P.Sollinger, August 1, 1841.The person to be photographed must be seated in the open air. For an exposure by overcast, dark skies in winter 3 ½ minutes is sufficient; on a sunny day in the shade 1½ to 2 minutes are enough, and in direct sunlight it requires no more than 40–45 seconds. The last, however, is seldom employed on account of the deep shadows direct sunlight creates. Daguerreotype camera built by La Maison Susse Frères in 1839, with a lens by Charles ChevalierThe first authenticated image of Abraham Lincoln was this daguerreotype of him as U.S. Congressman-elect in 1846, attributed to Nicholas H. Shepard of Springfield, IllinoisDaguerreotype of Andrew Jackson at age 77 or 78 (1844 or 1845).Daguerreotype of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington aged 74 or 75, made by Antoine Claudet in 1844.Ichiki Shirō's 1857 daguerreotype of Shimazu Nariakira, the earliest surviving Japanese photographThe solar eclipse of July 28, 1851, is the first correctly exposed photograph of a solar eclipse, using the daguerreotype process.Daguerreotype of philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling made by Hermann Biow in February 1848. The daguerreotype (/dəˈɡɛr(i)ətaɪp, -r(i)oʊ-/; French: daguerréotype) process, or daguerreotypy, was the first publicly available photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. Invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and introduced worldwide in 1839, daguerreotype was almost completely superseded by 1860 with new, less expensive processes yielding more readily viewable images. There was a revival of daguerreotypy in the late 20th century by a small number of photographers interested in making artistic use of early photographic processes. To make the image, a daguerrotypist would polish a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror finish, treat it with fumes that made its surface light sensitive, expose it in a camera for as long as was judged to be necessary, which could be as little as a few seconds for brightly sunlit subjects or much longer with less intense lighting; make the resulting latent image on it visible by fuming it with mercury vapor; remove its sensitivity to light by liquid chemical treatment, rinse and dry it, then seal the easily marred result behind glass in a protective enclosure. The image is on a mirror-like silver surface, normally kept under glass, and will appear either positive or negative, depending on the angle at which it is viewed, how it is lit and whether a light or dark background is being reflected in the metal. The darkest areas of the image are simply bare silver; lighter areas have a microscopically fine light-scattering texture. The surface is very delicate, and even the lightest wiping can permanently scuff it. Some tarnish around the edges is normal. Several types of antique photographs, most often ambrotypes and tintypes, but sometimes even old prints on paper, are very commonly misidentified as daguerreotypes, especially if they are in the small, ornamented cases in which daguerreotypes made in the US and UK were usually housed. The name 'daguerreotype' correctly refers only to one very specific image type and medium, the product of a process that was in wide use only from the early 1840s to the late 1850s. Since the Renaissance era, artists and inventors had searched for a mechanical method of capturing visual scenes. Using the camera obscura, artists would manually trace what they saw, or use the optical image in the camera as a basis for solving the problems of perspective and parallax, and deciding color values. The camera obscura's optical reduction of a real scene in three-dimensional space to a flat rendition in two dimensions influenced western art, so that at one point, it was thought that images based on optical geometry (perspective) belonged to a more advanced civilization. Later, with the advent of Modernism, the absence of perspective in oriental art from China, Japan and in Persian miniatures was revalued. In the early seventeenth century, the Italian physician and chemist Angelo Sala wrote that powdered silver nitrate was blackened by the sun, but did not find any practical application of the phenomenon. The discovery and commercial availability of the halides: iodine, bromine and chlorine a few years earlier (iodine was discovered by Courtois in 1811, bromine by Löwig in 1825 and Balard in 1826 independently, and chlorine by Scheele in 1774) meant that silver photographic processes that rely on the reduction of silver iodide, silver bromide and silver chloride to metallic silver became feasible. The daguerreotype is one of these processes, but was not the first, as Niépce had experimented with paper silver chloride negatives while Wedgwood's experiments were with silver nitrate as were Schultze's stencils of letters. Hippolyte Bayard had been persuaded by Arago to wait before making his paper process public. Previous discoveries of photosensitive methods and substances—including silver nitrate by Albertus Magnus in the 13th century, a silver and chalk mixture by Johann Heinrich Schulze in 1724, and Joseph Niépce's bitumen-based heliography in 1822 contributed to development of the daguerreotype.