FSB #2 - Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre Traditional Cache
TheShutterbugs: It is gone... Opening up the area for a new cache.
FSB #2 - Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
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This is the part of a series of caches on Famous
Shutterbugs.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
He was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, France. He apprenticed in
architecture, theater design, and panoramic painting. Exceedingly
adept at his skill for theatrical illusion, he became a celebrated
designer for the theater and later came to invent the Diorama,
which opened in Paris in July 1822.
In 1827, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced the world's first
permanent photograph (known as a Heliograph). Daguerre partnered
with Niépce two years later, beginning a four-year cooperation.
Niépce died suddenly in 1833. The main reason for the
"partnership", as far as Daguerre was concerned, was connected to
his already famous dioramas. Niepce was a printer and his process
was based on a faster way to produce printing plates. Daguerre
thought that the process developed by Niepce could help speed up
his diorama creation.
Daguerre announced the latest perfection of the Daguerreotype,
after years of experimentation, in 1839, with the French Academy of
Sciences announcing the process on January 9 of that year.
Daguerre's patent was acquired by the French Government, and, on
August 19, 1839, the French Government announced the invention was
a gift "Free to the World."
The first permanent photograph was made in 1826 by Joseph
Nicéphore Niépce, building on a discovery by Johann Heinrich
Schultz (1724): a silver and chalk mixture darkens under exposure
to light. Niépce and Daguerre refined this process. Daguerre first
exposed silver-coated copper plates to iodine, obtaining silver
iodide. Then he exposed them to light for several minutes. Then he
coated the plate with mercury vapor heated to 75° Celsius, to
amalgate the mercury with the silver, finally fixing the image in
salt water. These ideas led to the famous Daguerreotype.
The resultant plate produced a mirror-like exact reproduction of
the scene. The image was a mirror of the original scene. The image
could only be viewed at an angle and needed protection from the air
and fingerprints so was encased in a glass-fronted box.
Some ambrotypes were passed off as Daguerreotypes by being placed
in these type of boxes. But the process was cheaper involving a
weakly developed negative being placed on back card or paper to
appear as a positive. Tintypes also were "boxed" as
Daguerrotypes.
Daguerreotypes were usually portraits; the rarer views are much
sought-after and are more expensive. The portrait process took
several minutes and required the subjects to remain stock still.
Samuel Morse was astonished to learn that Daguerrotypes of streets
of Paris did not show any humans, until he realized that due to the
long exposure times all moving objects became invisible. The time
was later reduced with the "faster" lenses such as the Petzval's
portrait lens, the first mathematically calculated lens.
The Daguerreotype was the Polaroid of the day, producing a single
image which was not reproducible (unlike the Talbot process).
Despite this drawback, millions of Daguerreotypes were produced. By
1851, the year of Daguerre's death, the Fox Talbot negative process
was refined by the development of the wet collodion process,
whereby a glass negative enabled a limitless number of sharp prints
to be made. These developments made the Daguerreotype redundant and
the process very soon disappeared.
Though Daguerre obtained a pension from the Government, the
deceased Niépce did not. Eventually his son fought for and won a
pension from the government recognizing his father's work.
Daguerre died in Bry-sur-Marne, 12 km from Paris. A monument marks
his grave there.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
O Guerr