The Process

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The Daguerreotype Process

Louis Jacques Mande DAGUERRE (1787-1851)

The daguerreotype process was the first practicable method of obtaining permanent images with a . The man who gave his name to the process and perfected the method of producing direct positive images on a silver-coated copper plate was Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, a French artist and scenic painter. Daguerre had began experimenting with ways of fixing the images formed by the around 1824, but in 1829 he entered into partnership with Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833), a French amateur scientist and inventor who, in 1826, had succeeded in securing a picture of the view from his window by using a a camera obscura and a pewter plate coated with bitumen. Niepce called his picture-making process heliography ("sun drawing"), but although he had managed to produce a permanent image using a camera, the time was around 8 hours. Niepce later abandoned pewter plates in favour of silver-plated sheets of copper and discovered that the vapour from iodine reacted with the silver coating [ ABOVE ] A to produce silver iodide, a light sensitive compound. daguerreotype portrait of Louis After the death of Niepce in 1833, Daguerre continued to experiment with copper plates Jacques Daguerre coated with silver iodide to produce direct positive pictures. Daguerre discovered that the by John Jabez latent image on an exposed plate could be brought out or "developed" with the fumes from Edwin Mayall , a warmed mercury. The use of mercury vapour meant that photographic images could be photographic artist produced in twenty to thirty minutes rather than hours. In 1837, Daguerre found a way of who established a "fixing" the photographic images with a solution of common salt. Two years later, he studio in London in followed the suggestion of Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) and adopted hyposulphate of 1847 and later set soda (now thiosulphate of soda ) as the fixing agent. up a photographic studio in Brighton, Daguerre began making successful pictures using his improved process from 1837. On Sussex. This 19th August,1839, at a meeting in Paris, the Daguerreotype Process was revealed to the daguerreotype world. dates from 1846.

In England, Richard Beard (1801-1885), a former coal merchant and patent speculator, [ LEFT] Apparatus bought the patent to Alexander Wolcott's mirror camera and employed the services of and equipment for John Frederick Goddard (1795-1866), a chemist, to find a way of reducing exposure times making to less than a few minutes, thereby making it possible to take daguerreotype portraits. On , 23rd March 1841, Richard Beard opened England’s first daguerreotype portrait studio in from an London's Regent Street. In June 1841, Beard purchased from Daguerre the patent rights to advertisement the daguerreotype process in England. published in 1843.

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2/8 An Early Daguerreotype Portrait Studio (1842)

a. A daguerreotype studio was often situated at the very top of a building, which had a glass roof to let in as much light as possible.

b. The subject sat on a posing chair placed on a raised platform, which could be rotated to face the light. The sitter's head is held still by a clamp (x).

The stages of making a daguerreotype portrait

1. An assistant polishes a silver-coated copper plate with a long buffer until the surface is highly reflective (y). c. The highly polished plate is then taken into the , where it is sensitized with chemicals ( e.g. chloride of iodine, chloride of bromine ).

2. The operator places the sensitized plate into a camera placed on a high shelf (z). Wh