Louis
Daguerre, inventor of daguerreotype of photo process; as shot by Eugene Thiesson (1822-1877)
Louis-Jacques-Mande
Daguerre captured for posterity by a daguerreotype.
Photograph: Ewbank's Auctioneers Louis-Jacques-Mande
Daguerre captured for posterity by a daguerreotype.
And it's telling that many of Niepce's and
Daguerre's first images--including the oldest surviving camera photograph, View from the Window at he Gras, created by the former in 1826 or '27--were views of the city, since buildings were an ideal subject for early cameras requiring exposure times measured in hours or days.
In 1829, Niepce partnered with another Frenchman, Louis
Daguerre, to improve the process further and in 1839 after several years of experimentation,
Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography called daguerreotype.
While in France promoting his telegraph in 1839, he witnessed first-hand Louis
Daguerre's success in permanently affixing an image to a glass plate treated with light sensitive chemicals.
The announcement by the French inventor Louis
Daguerre the previous year of a new technique for capturing the world generated global excitement.
Celebrated since 2010, the date marks August 19, 1839, when the French government bought the patent for the daguerreotype - a photographic process developed by Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Louis
Daguerre in 1837 - and announced the invention as a gift "free to the world".
After the invention of the Daguerreotype photography by Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Louis
Daguerre, the process was formally accepted by the French Academy of Sciences.
Australian author Dominic Smith has brought historic events and vibrant places to life in books like The Mercury Visions of Louis
Daguerre and Bright and Distant Shores.