daguerreotype

daguerreotype

Still Life, daguerreotype by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, 1837; …

(credit: Collection de la Société Francaiçe de Photographie, Paris)

First successful form of photography. It is named for Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who invented the technique in collaboration with Nicéphore Niépce. They found that if a copper plate coated with silver iodide is exposed to light in a camera, then fumed with mercury vapour and fixed (made permanent) by a solution of common salt, a permanent image is formed. The first daguerreotype image was produced in 1837, by which time Niépce had died, so the process was named for Daguerre. Many daguerreotypes, especially portraits, were made in the mid-19th century; the technique was gradually replaced by the wet collodion process, introduced in 1851.