Samuel B. Morse (b. 1791, d. 1872)


Samuel B. Morse was the first man to introduce the Daguerreotype to the United States after meeting Daguerre and witnessing what he called "one of the most beautiful discoveries of the age". After his meeting with Daguerre, he promptly wrote to the New York Observer to let them know of this new invention which was gaining vast popularity in Europe but not yet in the United States. Morse soon discovered that his brand of American photography was not as profitable as he'd hoped and later moved on to other ventures. He did however expose the art to Mathew Brady, one of the greatest photographers of the 19th century.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sfbmhtml/sfbmlesseressay.html

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (b.1787, d.1851)

Born in Carmeilles-en-Parisi. He became an apprentice to a local painter and later went on to become an acclaimed stage designer in Paris. He frequently used a camera obscura as a drawing aid. Later he discovered the work of Nichephore Niepce and quickly formed a partnership with him to aquire and learn this new technology before Niepce took the secret to the grave. After Neipce died in 1833, Daguerre continued to experiment with glass plates and an assortment of different chemicals in attempts to capture and fix an image. Daguerre was finally able to do this by an accidental discovery in which he put an exposed plate in a cabinet and came to find days later that the image on the plate had developed due to the mercury vapour from a broken thermometer. This discoer was very important because it allowed Daguerre to greatly reduce exposure times from 8 hours to around 30 minutes. This process is what became the 'Daguerreotype'.

Because Daguerre had political connections and powerful friends such as Francois Arago who presented the invention of photography to the Academies of Fine Arts and Sciences, he was able to put his invention on a fastrack to success. In truth, Daguerre was not the first to properly expose and fix an image. It was Hippolyte Bayard (1801-1887). However, Bayard was not acknowledged for his work and as a matter of fact was tricked by Francois Arago to postpone his invention so that Daguerre could take the credit. For the rest of Bayard's life, he felt wronged and betrayed by Arago and Daguerre which is most evident in a self portrait he did which depicts him drowning himself. After Arago gave photography its premier, it agreed upon that anyone Frenchmen was allowed to use the new technology free of charge although anyone outside of France had to pay an equivalent to a patent fee. This, however, was loosly if ever enforced which led to photography diffusing across Europe and subsenquently, America.http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/daguerr.htm
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Biographies/MainBiographies/D/Daguerre/1.html

First Post. Al Hazen, Thomas Wedgwood, Camera Obscura

The date is January 25, 2011 and today I learned about the invention of Camera Obscura (latin for 'dark chamber), the first device invented for the function of capturing images. The concept of Camera Obscura was first devised by an amazing guy named Al Hazen. Al Hazen lived between 965-1040 A.D. during which time he made incredible contribution to science and optics, essentially laying the foundation for Trigonometry, Calculus, Physical Science, Opthamology, Engineering, and of course the concept of Photography. He came up with all of these ideas well before Leonardo Da Vinci. What's fascninating is how totally revolutionary and ahead of his time his ideas were, quite literally predating modern science by a thousand years.

His concept of the Camera Obscura came from the notion of light being trapped and inverted to a backwards upside down image. Since light travels in a straight line, it could be projected through an aperture, or in this instance, a hole cut through one of the sides. This in turn lead to an exposure onto a light sensitive compund. The compound, however, wouldn't come until much later. Al Hazen was the person ever to conduct optical experiments such as this and layed the foundation for future experiements and the subsequent invention of Photography.

Another individual who contributed greatly to the art of photography was a man by the name of Charles Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche. He lived from February 19, 1722 until August 11, 1774. His contributions to Photography are recognized by his prediction of it prior to its actual fruition. He also predicted television and synthetic foods.http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~jeff/115a/history/alhazen.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/alhazen.html