Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, lithograph. (credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre |
For more information on Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, visit Britannica.com.
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Oxford Dictionary of Scientists:
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre |
French physicist, inventor, and painter (1789–1851)
Born in Cormeilles near Paris, France, Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype (the first practical photograph), first became interested in the effect of light on films from the artistic point of view. After working first as a tax officer he became a painter of opera scenery. Working with Charles-Marie Bouton he invented the diorama – a display of paintings on semitransparent linen that transmitted and reflected light – and opened a diorama in Paris (1822).
From 1826 Daguerre turned his attention to heliography and he was partnered in this by Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce until Niepce's death in 1833. Daguerre continued his work and in 1839 presented to the French Academy of Sciences the daguerreotype, which needed only about 25-minutes exposure time to produce an image, compared with over eight hours for Niepce's previous attempts. In the daguerreotype a photographic image was obtained on a copper plate coated with a light-sensitive layer of silver iodide and bromide.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre |
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), a French painter and stage designer, invented the daguerreotype, the first practical and commercially successful photographic process.
Louis Daguerre was born on Nov. 18, 1787, at Cormeilles-en-Parisis. Abandoning his architectural training in 1804, he turned to scene painting and became a pupil of I. E. M. Degotti at the Paris Opéra. In 1822 Daguerre and Charles Bouton developed the diorama, a large-scale peep show in which a painting on a large translucent screen was seemingly animated by the skillful play of light on each side. Daguerre made dioramas for 17 years.
Daguerre used the camera obscura to make sketches for his stage designs and, like so many others, wished to avoid the tedious tracing and fix the image chemically. After several unsuccessful efforts he learned in 1826 that J. N. Niépce was working toward the same end and had made some progress. A cautious correspondence followed, in which Niépce revealed his heliograph process, and in 1829 Daguerre and Niépce formed a partnership to develop the method.
Heliography depended on the hardening action of sunlight on bitumen and the subsequent dissolution of the soft shadow parts of the image. Using this method on a glass plate, Niépce had obtained and fixed a photograph from the camera obscura in 1826. But his aspirations went beyond a visible image to a photoengraved plate from which he could pull prints. This goal led to his using bitumen on silver-coated copperplates and then iodizing the silver revealed after dissolving the unexposed bitumen. The removal of the hardened bitumen produced a silver-silver iodide image. But Niépce went no further.
Building on his partner's foundation, Daguerre discovered the light sensitivity of silver iodide in 1831 but was unable to obtain a visible image. His discovery in 1835 that the latent image present on a silver iodide plate exposed for so short a time as 20 minutes could be developed with mercury vapor marked a major advance. Fixing was achieved in 1837, when he removed the unreduced silver iodide with a solution of common salt. Having improved Niépce's process beyond recognition, Daguerre felt justified in calling it the daguerreotype. He ceded the process to the French government. He revealed his discovery on Aug. 19, 1839.
Daguerre retired to Bry-sur-Marne in 1840 and died there on July 10, 1851. He had little more to do with the daguerreotype, leaving its improvement to others. It was perhaps the invention which most caught popular fancy in the mid-19th century, but it proved to be a blind alley in the development of modern photography.
Further Reading
Daguerre's life is fully documented in Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype (1956). Their The History of Photography (1955) is an excellent overall discussion of photography.
Oxford Companion to the Photograph:
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre |
Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mandé (1787-1851), French artist and inventor of the daguerreotype, born at Cormeilles-en-Parisis. Showing an early aptitude as an artist, he was apprenticed in 1800 to an architect, and c.1803 became a pupil of Degotti, the noted scene painter for the Paris Opera. In 1807 he began working under Pierre Prévost on panorama paintings. These enormous canvases were highly realistic depictions of cities and historical scenes. Their manner of display, in rotundas lit from above, added to their illusion of reality and may have inspired Daguerre and Charles Bouton, another of Prévost's assistants, to launch their own venture, the diorama. Combining the scale of the panorama with the diaphanorama, another invention that used paintings on paper, oiled for translucency, and alternately lit from either side to create subtle changes in the views, Daguerre and Bouton created a wholly novel form of highly realistic public entertainment. It opened in Paris in 1822 and was so successful that another was built in London.
Daguerre is best remembered for the photographic process that bears his name. Although he was credited in many early texts with the single-handed invention of photography, current scholarship indicates that Daguerre received more than his share of credit. He worked in partnership with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce from 1829 until Niépce's untimely death in 1833, and much of the preliminary work leading to a photographic process can be credited to Niépce and this partnership. Daguerre's greatest contribution to photographic science was his discovery of the latent image, without which a commercially viable process would not have been possible. This discovery was for many years linked primarily to Henry Talbot's calotype process, but was pre-dated by the daguerreotype. His experiments finished by late 1837, Daguerre tried in 1838 to sell the process by public subscription. This having failed, he approached François Arago, director of the Paris Observatory, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and also a member of the Chamber of Deputies. Arago, impressed with Daguerre's discovery, brought an article before the Chamber arguing that, as this great discovery for science and the arts could not be patented, the French government should honour Daguerre and purchase from him the secrets of the process and give them free to the world. A preliminary announcement of the discovery was made on 7 January 1839. In July 1839 the government awarded Daguerre an annuity of 6, 000 francs for life and to Isidore Niépce (1805-68), son of Daguerre's late partner, 4, 000 francs annually. Full details of the process were revealed on 19 August 1839. On the 14th, however, without the knowledge of the French government, Daguerre had patented the process in England, somewhat hampering the adoption of the daguerreotype there.
About fifteen daguerreotypes made by Daguerre in 1839 survive, including still lifes of statuettes, shells, and fossils, and some fine views of Paris. He announced new developments in the process in 1840 and 1841, but details never materialized. By late 1840 improvements by others in Europe and America brought it to the stage at which it is best known.
Daguerre died at his home in Bry-sur-Marne the same year that Frederick Scott Archer introduced his wet-plate process, which within less than a decade had superseded the daguerreotype.
— Roger Watson
Bibliography
Oxford Companion to French Literature:
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre |
Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé (1787-1851). Inventor of a ‘diorama’, a popular attraction creating illusions of nature, and (with Nicéphore Niépce) of the daguerreotype, one of the earliest photographic processes, whose existence was officially announced in 1839.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre |
Bibliography
See study by H. and A. Gernsheim (rev. ed. 1968).
AMG AllMovie Guide:
Louis Daguerre |
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Louis Daguerre |
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This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (August 2011) |
| Louis Daguerre | |
|---|---|
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre |
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| Born | 18 November 1787 Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France |
| Died | 10 July 1851 (aged 63) Bry-sur-Marne, France |
| Known for | Invention of the daguerreotype process |
| Signature | |
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.
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Daguerre was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France. He apprenticed in architecture, theatre design, and panoramic painting with Pierre Prévost, the first French panorama painter. Exceedingly adept at his skill of theatrical illusion, he became a celebrated designer for the theatre and later came to invent the Diorama, which opened in Paris in July 1822.
In 1829, Daguerre partnered with Nicéphore Niépce, an inventor who had produced the world's first heliograph in 1822 and the first permanent camera photograph four years later.[1][2] Niépce died suddenly in 1833, but Daguerre continued experimenting and evolved the process which would subsequently be known as the Daguerreotype. After efforts to interest private investors proved fruitless, Daguerre went public with his invention in 1839. At a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences on 7 January of that year, the invention was announced and described in general terms, but all specific details were withheld. Under assurances of strict confidentiality, Daguerre explained and demonstrated the process only to the Academy's perpetual secretary François Arago, who proved to be an invaluable advocate. Members of the Academy and other select individuals were allowed to examine specimens at Daguerre's studio. The images were enthusiastically praised as nearly miraculous and news of the Daguerreotype quickly spread. Arrangements were made for Daguerre's rights to be acquired by the French Government in exchange for lifetime pensions for himself and Niépce's son Isidore; then, on 19 August 1839, the French Government presented the invention as a gift from France "free to the world" and complete working instructions were published.
Daguerre died on 10 July 1851 of a heart attack in Bry-sur-Marne, 12 km (7 mi) from Paris. A monument marks his grave there.
Daguerre's name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel tower.
In 1826, prior to his association with Daguerre, Niépce used a coating of bitumen to make the first permanent camera photograph. The bitumen was hardened where it was exposed to light and the unhardened portion was then removed with a solvent. A camera exposure lasting for hours or days was required. Niépce and Daguerre later refined this process, but unacceptably long exposures were still needed.
After the death of Niépce in 1833, Daguerre concentrated his attention on the light-sensitive properties of silver salts, which had previously been demonstrated by Johann Heinrich Schultz and others. For the process which was eventually named the Daguerreotype, he exposed a thin silver-plated copper sheet to the vapor given off by iodine crystals, producing a coating of light-sensitive silver iodide on the surface. The plate was then exposed in the camera. Initially, this process, too, required a very long exposure to produce a distinct image, but Daguerre made the crucial discovery that an invisibly faint "latent" image created by a much shorter exposure could be chemically "developed" into a visible image. The latent image on a Daguerreotype plate was developed by subjecting it to the vapor given off by mercury heated to 75° Celsius. The resulting visible image was then "fixed" (made insensitive to further exposure to light) by removing the unaffected silver iodide with concentrated and heated salt water. Later, a solution of the more effective "hypo" (hyposulphite of soda, now known as sodium thiosulfate) was used instead.[3]
The resultant plate produced an exact reproduction of the scene. The image was laterally reversed -- as images in mirrors are -- unless a mirror or inverting prism was used during exposure to flip the image. To be seen optimally, the image had to be lit at a certain angle and viewed so that the smooth parts of its mirror-like surface, which represented the darkest parts of the image, reflected something dark or dimly lit. The surface was subject to tarnishing by prolonged exposure to the air and was so soft that it could be marred by the slightest friction, so a Daguerreotype was almost always sealed under glass before being framed (as was commonly done in France) or mounted in a small folding case (as was normal in the UK and US).
Daguerreotypes were usually portraits; the rarer landscape views and other unusual subjects are now much sought-after by collectors and sell for much higher prices than ordinary portraits. At the time of its introduction, the process required exposures lasting ten minutes or more for brightly sunlit subjects, so portraiture was an impractical ordeal. Samuel Morse was astonished to learn that Daguerreotypes of the streets of Paris did not show any people, horses or vehicles, until he realized that due to the long exposure times all moving objects became invisible. Within a few years, exposures had been reduced to as little as a few seconds by the use of additional sensitizing chemicals and "faster" lenses such as Petzval's portrait lens, the first mathematically calculated lens.
The Daguerreotype was the Polaroid film of its day: it produced a unique image which could only be duplicated by using a camera to photograph the original. Despite this drawback, millions of Daguerreotypes were produced. The paper-based calotype process, introduced by Henry Fox Talbot in 1841, allowed the production of an unlimited number of copies by simple contact printing, but it had its own shortcomings—the grain of the paper was obtrusively visible in the image and the extremely fine detail of which the Daguerreotype was capable was not possible. The introduction of the wet collodion process in the early 1850s provided the basis for a negative-positive print-making process not subject to these limitations, although it, like the Daguerreotype, was initially used to produce one-of-a-kind images—ambrotypes on glass and tintypes on black-lacquered iron sheets—rather than prints on paper. These new types of images were much less expensive than Daguerreotypes and they were easier to view. By 1860 few photographers were still using Daguerre's process.
The same small ornate cases commonly used to house Daguerreotypes were also used for images produced by the later and very different ambrotype and tintype processes, and the images originally in them were sometimes later discarded so that they could be used to display photographic paper prints. It is now a very common error for any image in such a case to be described as "a Daguerreotype". A true Daguerreotype is always an image on a highly polished silver surface, usually under protective glass. If it is viewed while a brightly lit sheet of white paper is held so as to be seen reflected in its mirror-like metal surface, the Daguerreotype image will appear as a relatively faint negative—its dark and light areas reversed—instead of a normal positive. Other types of photographic images are almost never on polished metal and do not exhibit this peculiar characteristic of appearing positive or negative depending on the lighting and reflections.
Unbeknownst to either inventor, Daguerre's developmental work in the mid-1830s coincided with photographic experiments being conducted by Henry Fox Talbot in England. Talbot had succeeded in producing a "sensitive paper" impregnated with silver chloride and capturing small camera images on it in the summer of 1835. At least one of those images still survives. Talbot was unaware that Daguerre's late partner Niépce had obtained similar small camera images on sliver-chloride-coated paper nearly twenty years earlier. Niépce could find no way to keep them from darkening all over when exposed to light for viewing and had therefore turned away from silver salts to experiment with other substances such as bitumen. Talbot, a gifted amateur chemist, was able to chemically stabilize his images sufficiently to withstand subsequent inspection in daylight with only a very limited degree of discoloration.
When the first reports of the French Academy of Sciences announcement of Daguerre's invention reached Talbot, with no details about the exact nature of the images or the process itself, he assumed that methods similar to his own must have been used and promptly wrote an open letter to the Academy claiming priority of invention. Although it soon became apparent that Daguerre's process was very unlike his own, Talbot had been stimulated to resume his long-discontinued photographic experiments, which eventually resulted in the calotype process, introduced in 1841. Like a sensitized Daguerreotype plate, but unlike Talbot's earlier "sensitive paper", better known as "salted paper", the calotype paper had to be exposed in the camera only long enough to produce a very faint or completely invisible image which was then chemically developed to full visibility. The negative image that resulted was made insensitive to light by treatment with "hypo", dried, then used to make one or more positive prints on salted paper by contact printing in sunlight.
Daguerre's agent in England applied for a British patent on 12 August 1839, a week before France declared the invention "free to the world". Great Britain was thereby uniquely denied France's free gift and became the only place where the payment of license fees was required. This had the effect of inhibiting the spread of the process there, to the eventual advantage of competing processes which were subsequently introduced. Antoine Claudet was one of the few people legally licensed to make Daguerreotypes in Britain. Daguerre's pension was relatively modest—barely enough to support a middle-class existence—and apparently this British "irregularity" was allowed to pass without adverse consequences or much comment outside of the UK.[4][5]
By contrast, resentment and negative comments certainly resulted when the independently wealthy Talbot, who had spent a considerable amount of money in developing his calotype process (about £5,000, equivalent to £378,000 as of 2012),[6] did not make a similar general gift of it to mankind, or at least to his own countrymen, but opted to emulate Daguerre's UK policy and require the purchase of licenses for its use. This inhibited the widespread adoption of the calotype process as an alternative to the Daguerreotype in the UK. Eventually, Talbot relented and required licenses only from professional photographers using the process for portraiture. Talbot also gained a reputation for litigiousness, suing several subsequent inventors whose processes he believed to infringe his own British patents in some way. Ultimately, some key claims in Talbot's patents were ruled invalid.[citation needed]
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