Since the Renaissance era, artists and inventors had searched for a mechanical method of capturing visual scenes. Using the camera obscura, artists would manually trace what they saw, or use the optical image as a … See more

The camera obscura (Latin for "dark chamber") in its simplest form is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
A broad-leaved tree … See more

The daguerreotype image is formed on a highly polished silver surface. Usually the silver is a thin layer on a copper substrate, but other metals such as brass can be used for the … See more

Polishing
To optimize the image quality of the end product, the silver side of the plate had to be polished to as … See more

Daguerreotypes are normally laterally reversed—mirror images—because they are necessarily viewed from the side that originally faced the … See more

A paragraph tacked onto the end of a review of one of Daguerre's Diorama spectacles in the Journal des artistes on 27 September 1835, a See more

Even when strengthened by gilding, the image surface was still very easily marred and air would tarnish the silver, so the finished plate was … See more