What is a Daguerreotype?
A daguerreotype is a photograph produced using the daguerreotyping process. Daguerreotypes are often regarded as the first viable form of photography, although the technique was quickly supplanted with more effective photographic processes. Some examples of daguerreotypes can be seen on display in museums and facilities which maintain materials relating to the history of photography, and replications of daguerreotypes are often printed in textbooks so that readers can see what historical figures and places really looked like. The process was developed through a joint effort between Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre and Nicephore Niepce. Niepce died before the process was perfected, leaving Daguerre to finesse the technique, name it after himself, and take the first known daguerreotype in 1837. Two years later, the discovery was announced by the French Academy of Sciences, and the French government declared the daguerreotype a “gift to the world.” The photographic process spread quickly and
The daguerreotype process is one of the earliest photographic processes, invented by the Frenchman Louis Daguerre and announced to the world in August 1839. A daguerreotype consists of a silvered copper plate, which bears the image, and a housing to protect the plate. The image in a daguerreotype is in negative, but it can be viewed as a positive when the reflective surface reflects something dark. The details in a daguerreotype can be very clear and sharp. The image itself consists of higher or lower densities of microscopic silver halide particle. For more information on what a daguerreotype looks like and how it is produced, which books to read, as well as articles about the inventor and the history of the process, please visit the online dossier The Daguerreotype: Permanent Gleam on the website of the Nederlands Fotomuseum, written by one of the administrators of the Daguerreobase: http://www.nederlandsfotomuseum.
