Daguerreotype - Proliferation

Proliferation

André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri and Jules Itier in France, and Johann Baptist Isenring in Switzerland, became prominent daguerreotypists. In Britain, however, Richard Beard bought the British daguerreotype patent from Miles Berry in 1841 and closely controlled his investment, selling licenses throughout the country and prosecuting infringers. Among others, Antoine Claudet and Thomas Richard Williams produced daguerreotypes in the U.K.

Daguerreotype photography spread rapidly across the United States. In the early 1840s, the invention was introduced in a period of months to practitioners in the United States by Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph code. By 1853 an estimated three million daguerreotypes per year were being produced in the united states alone. One of these original Morse Daguerreotype cameras is currently on display at the National Museum of American History, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. A flourishing market in portraiture sprang up, predominantly the work of itinerant practitioners who traveled from town to town. For the first time in history, people could obtain an exact likeness of themselves or their loved ones for a modest cost, making portrait photographs extremely popular with those of modest means. Notable U.S. daguerreotypists of the mid-19th century included James Presley Ball, Samuel Bemis, Abraham Bogardus, Mathew Brady, Thomas Martin Easterly, François Fleischbein, Jeremiah Gurney, John Plumbe, Jr., Albert Southworth, Augustus Washington, Ezra Greenleaf Weld, and John Adams Whipple.

This method spread to other parts of the world as well. In 1857, Ichiki Shirō created the first known Japanese photograph, a portrait of his daimyo Shimazu Nariakira. This photograph was designated an Important Cultural Property by the government of Japan.

The daguerreotype is commonly, erroneously, believed to have been the dominant photographic process into the late part of the 19th century in Europe. Evidence from the period shows that it was in widespread use for less than twenty years before being superseded by other processes:

• The calotype, introduced in 1841; a negative-positive process using a paper negative.
• The collodion wet plate process, introduced in 1851; a negative-positive process using halide-impregnated collodion poured from a bottle onto a glass plate and sensitized by immersion in a silver nitrate bath.

The collodion wet plate process was used to produce ambrotypes on glass and tintypes or ferrotypes on a coated iron plate.

• The ambrotype, introduced in 1854; a negative image on glass which appeared positive when on dark "ruby" glass or backed with a black varnish or cloth.
• The tintype or ferrotype, introduced in 1856; an image like the ambrotype, but on a thin blackened iron plate instead of glass.