daguerre's

Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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The son of a minor official in a magistrate's court, Daguerre showed an early aptitude for drawing. He was first apprenticed to an architect, but in 1804 he moved to Paris to learn the art of stage design. He was particularly interested in perspective and lighting, and later showed great ingenuity in lighting stage sets. Fascinated by a popular form of entertainment of the period, the panorama, he went on to create a variant of it called the diorama. It is assumed that he used a camera obscura for perspective drawings and, by purchasing it from the optician Chevalier, he made contact with Joseph Nicéphore Niepce. In 1829 Niepce and Daguerre entered into a formal partnership to perfect Niepce's heliographic process, but the partnership was dissolved when Niepce died in 1833, when only limited progress had been made. Daguerre continued experimenting alone, however, using iodine and silver plates; by 1837 he had discovered that images formed in the camera obscura could be developed by mercury vapour and fixed with a hot salt solution. After unsuccessfully attempting to sell his process, Daguerre approached F.J.D. Arago, of the Académie des Sciences, who announced the discovery in 1839. Details of Daguerre's work were not published until August of that year when the process was presented free to the world, except England. With considerable business acumen, Daguerre had quietly patented the process through an agent, Miles Berry, in London a few days earlier. He also granted a monopoly to make and sell his camera to a Monsieur Giroux, a stationer by trade who happened to be a relation of Daguerre's wife. The daguerreotype process caused a sensation when announced. Daguerre was granted a pension by a grateful government and honours were showered upon him all over the world. It was a direct positive process on silvered copper plates and, in fact, proved to be a technological dead end. The future was to lie with negative-positive photography devised by Daguerre's British contemporary, W.H.F. Talbot, although Daguerre's was the first practicable photographic process to be announced. It captured the public's imagination and in an improved form was to dominate professional photographic practice for more than a decade.

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Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Educated as a notary's clerk, Bayard began his working life in Paris in the Ministry of Finance. His interest in art led him to investigations into the chemical action of light, and he began his experiments in 1837. In May 1839 Bayard described an original photographic process which produced direct positive images on paper. It was devised independently of Talbot and before details of Daguerre's process had been published. During the same period, similar techniques were announced by other investigators and Bayard became involved in a series of priority disputes. Bayard's photographs were well received when first exhibited, and examples survive to the present day. Because the process required long exposure times it was rarely practised, but Bayard is generally credited with being an independent inventor of photography.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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The son of a distinguished Parisian instrument maker, Charles Chevalier supplied equipment to all the major photographic pioneers of the period. He sold a camera obscura to Niepce de St Victor as early as 1826 and was largely responsible for bringing Niepce de St Victor and Daguerre together. Chevalier was one of the first opticians to design lenses specifically for photographic use; the first photographic camera to be offered for sale to the public, the Giroux daguerreotype camera of 1839, was in fact fitted with a Chevalier achromatic lens. Chevalier also supplied lenses, equipment and examples of daguerreotypes to Talbot in England. In 1841 Chevalier was awarded first prize in a competition for the improvement of photographic lenses, sponsored by the Société d'Encouragement of Paris. Contemporary opinion, however, favoured the runner-up, the Petzval Portrait lens by Voigtländer of Vienna, and Chevalier subsequently became embroiled in an acrimonious dispute which did him little credit. It did not stop him designing lenses, and he went on to become an extremely successful supplier of quality daguerreotype equipment. He was a founder member of the Société Héliographique in 1851.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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He began his working life in banking but soon went into glassmaking and in 1829 he moved to London to open a glass warehouse. On hearing of the first practicable photographic processes in 1834, Claudet visited Paris, where he received instruction in the daguerreotype process from the inventor Daguerre, and purchased a licence to operate in England. On returning to London he began to sell daguerreotype views of Paris and Rome, but was soon taking and selling his own views of London. At this time exposures could take as long as thirty minutes and portraiture from life was impracticable. Claudet was fascinated by the possibilities of the daguerreotype and embarked on experiments to improve the process. In 1841 he published details of an accelerated process and took out a patent proposing the use of flat painted backgrounds and a red light in dark-rooms. In June of that year Claudet opened the second daguerreotype portrait studio in London, just three months after his rival, Richard Beard. He took stereoscopic photographs for Wheatstone as early as 1842, although it was not until the 1850s that stereoscopy became a major interest. He suggested and patented several improvements to viewers derived from Brewster's pattern.

Claudet was also one of the first photographers to practise professionally Talbot's calotype process. He became a personal friend of Talbot, one of the few from whom the inventor was prepared to accept advice. Claudet died suddenly in London following an accident that occurred when he was alighting from an omnibus. A memoir produced shortly after his death lists over forty scientific papers relating to his researches into photography.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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The son of a scientific instrument maker, Dancer was educated privately in Liverpool, where from 1817 his father practised his trade. John Benjamin became a skilled instrument maker in his own right, assisting in the family business until his father's death in 1835. He set up on his own in Liverpool in 1840 and in Manchester in 1841. In the course of his career Dancer made instruments for several of the leading scientists of the day, his clients including Brewster, Dalton and Joule.

Dancer became interested in photography as soon as the new art was announced in 1839 and practised the processes of both Talbot and Daguerre. It was later claimed that as early as 1839 he used an achromatic lens combination to produce a minute image on a daguerreotype plate, arguably the world's first microphotograph and the precursor of modern microfilm. It was not until the introduction of Archer's wet-collodion process in 1851 that Dancer was able to perfect the technique however. He went on to market a long series of microphotographs which proved extremely popular with both the public and contemporary photographers. It was examples of Dancer's microphotographs that prompted the French photographer Dagron to begin his work in the same field. In 1853 Dancer constructed a binocular stereoscopic camera, the first practicable instrument of its type. In an improved form it was patented and marketed in 1856.

Dancer also made important contributions to the magic lantern. He was the first to suggest the use of limelight as an illuminant, pioneered the use of photographic lantern slides and devised an ingenious means of switching gas from one lantern illuminant to another to produce what were known as dissolving views. He was a resourceful innovator in other fields of instrumentation and suggested several other minor improvements to scientific apparatus before his working life was sadly terminated by the loss of his sight.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Fizeau's interest in photography was comparatively brief, but during this period he was at the forefront of French attempts to explore and exploit the potential of the recently announced daguerreotype process (see Daguerre). Fizeau is best remembered for his introduction in August 1840 of the practice of gold-toning daguerreotypes. This improvement not only helped protect the delicate surface of the plate from abrasion and tarnishing, but also enhanced the quality of the image. The technique was not patented and was immediately adopted by all daguerreotypists. Between 1839 and 1841, in association with Alfred Donné, Fizeau conducted experiments with the aim of converting daguerreotypes into printing plates. Prints from two of his plates were published in 1842, but the technique was never widely practised. In association with J.B.Léon Foucault, Fizeau discovered the reciprocity failure of daguerreotypes, and the same partnership produced what were probably the first daguerreotypes of the sun. Fizeau is best known in physics for making the first accurate determination of the speed of light, in 1849.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Coming from a prosperous family, Niepce was educated in a Catholic seminary and destined for the priesthood. The French Revolution intervened and Niepce became an officer in an infantry regiment. An attack of typhoid fever in Italy ended his military career, and he returned to France and was married. Returning to his paternal home in Chalon in 1801, he joined with his brother Claude to construct an ingenious engine called the pyréolophore, which they patented in 1807. The French Government also encouraged the brothers in their attempts to produce large quantities of indigo-blue dye from wood, a venture that was ultimately unsuccessful.

Nicéphore began to experiment with lithography, which led him to take an interest in the properties of light-sensitive materials. He pursued this interest after Claude moved to Paris in 1816 and is reported to have made negative images in a camera obscura using paper soaked in silver chloride. Niepce went on to experiment with bitumen of judea, a substance that hardened on exposure to light. In 1822, using bitumen of judea on glass, he produced a heliograph from an engraving. The first images from nature may have been made as early as 1824, but the world's earliest surviving photographic image was made in 1826. A view of the courtyard of Niepce's home in Chalon was captured on a pewter plate coated with bitumen of judea; an exposure of several hours was required, the softer parts of the bitumen being dissolved away by a solvent to reveal the image.

In 1827 he took examples of his work to London where he met Francis Bauer, Secretary of the Royal Society. Nothing came of this meeting, but on returning to France Niepce continued his work and in 1829 entered into a formal partnership with L.J.M. Daguerre with a view to developing their mutual interest in capturing images formed by the camera obscura. However, the partnership made only limited progress and was terminated by Niepce's death in 1833. It was another six years before the announcement of the first practicable photographic processes was made.

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See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA

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Abney, William de Wiveleslie

Acres, Birt

Anschütz, Ottomar

Archer, Frederick Scott

Baekeland, Leo Hendrik

Barnack, Oskar

Bayard, Hippolyte

Bennett, Charles Harper

Blanquart-Evrard, Louis-Désiré

Blumlein, Alan Dower

Brewster, Sir David

Carbutt, John

Carlson, Chester Floyd

Chevalier, Charles-Louis

Chrétien, Henri Jacques

Claudet, Antoine François Jean

Cros, Charles

Cros, Hortensius Emile Charles

Dagron, Prudent René-Patrice

Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mandé

Dallmeyer, John Henry

Dallmeyer, Thomas Rudolphus

Dallos, Joseph

Dancer, John Benjamin

De Forest, Lee

Demenÿ, Georges

Dickson, William Kennedy Laurie

Ding Huan

Ducos du Hauron, Arthur-Louis

Eastman, George

Edison, Thomas Alva

England, William

Fizeau, Armand Hippolyte Louis

Franklin, Benjamin

Gabor, Dennis

Galilei, Galileo

Gascoigne, William

Godowsky, Leopold Jr

Guinand, Pierre Louis

Hero of Alexandria

Herschel, John Frederick William

Hunt, Robert

Hurter, Ferdinand

Ives, Frederic Eugene

Jenkins, Charles Francis

Joly, John

Klic, Karol

Land, Edwin Herbert

Lauste, Eugène Augustin

Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van

Le Gray, Gustave

Lippershey, Hans

Lippman, Gabriel

Lumière, Auguste

Lumière, Charles Antoine

Maddox, Richard Leach

Maiman, Theodore Harold

Marey, Etienne-Jules

Marton, Ladislaus

Mees, Charles Edward Kenneth

Monckhoven, Désiré Charles Emanuel van

Muybridge, Eadweard

Neri, Antonio Ludovico

Niepce, Joseph Nicéphore

Niepce de St Victor, Claude Félix Abel

Paul, Robert William

Petzval, Josef Max

Poitevin, Alphonse Louise

Ponton, Mungo

Pouncy, John

Pretsch, Paul

Ravenscroft, George

Reichenbach, Georg Friedrich von

Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad

Ross, Andrew

Schawlow, Arthur Leonard

Snellen, Hermann

Steinheil, Carl August von

Sutton, Thomas

Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson

Talbot, William Henry Fox

Taylor, William

Torricelli, Evangelista

Tournachon, Gaspard Félix

Voigtländer, Peter Wilhelm Friedrich

Waterhouse, Major-General James

Watkins, Alfred

Woodbury, Walter Bentley

Wratten, Frederick Charles Luther

Zeiss, Carl

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Educated at Harrow, where he first showed an interest in science, and at Cambridge, Talbot was an outstanding scholar and a formidable mathematician. He published over fifty scientific papers and took out twelve English patents. His interests outside the field of science were also wide and included Assyriology, etymology and the classics. He was briefly a Member of Parliament, but did not pursue a parliamentary career.

Talbot's invention of photography arose out of his frustrating attempts to produce acceptable pencil sketches using popular artist's aids, the camera discura and camera lucida. From his experiments with the former he conceived the idea of placing on the screen a paper coated with silver salts so that the image would be captured chemically. During the spring of 1834 he made outline images of subjects such as leaves and flowers by placing them on sheets of sensitized paper and exposing them to sunlight. No camera was involved and the first images produced using an optical system were made with a solar microscope. It was only when he had devised a more sensitive paper that Talbot was able to make camera pictures; the earliest surviving camera negative dates from August 1835. From the beginning, Talbot noticed that the lights and shades of his images were reversed. During 1834 or 1835 he discovered that by placing this reversed image on another sheet of sensitized paper and again exposing it to sunlight, a picture was produced with lights and shades in the correct disposition. Talbot had discovered the basis of modern photography, the photographic negative, from which could be produced an unlimited number of positives. He did little further work until the announcement of Daguerre's process in 1839 prompted him to publish an account of his negative-positive process. Aware that his photogenic drawing process had many imperfections, Talbot plunged into further experiments and in September 1840, using a mixture incorporating a solution of gallic acid, discovered an invisible latent image that could be made visible by development. This improved calotype process dramatically shortened exposure times and allowed Talbot to take portraits. In 1841 he patented the process, an exercise that was later to cause controversy, and between 1844 and 1846 produced The Pencil of Nature, the world's first commercial photographically illustrated book.

Concerned that some of his photographs were prone to fading, Talbot later began experiments to combine photography with printing and engraving. Using bichromated gelatine, he devised the first practicable method of photo engraving, which was patented as Photoglyphic engraving in October 1852. He later went on to use screens of gauze, muslin and finely powdered gum to break up the image into lines and dots, thus anticipating modern photomechanical processes.

Talbot was described by contemporaries as the "Father of Photography" primarily in recognition of his discovery of the negative-positive process, but he also produced the first photomicrographs, took the first high-speed photographs with the aid of a spark from a Leyden jar, and is credited with proposing infra-red photography. He was a shy man and his misguided attempts to enforce his calotype patent made him many enemies. It was perhaps for this reason that he never received the formal recognition from the British nation that his family felt he deserved.

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