Louis Daguerre
Louis Daguerre produced the first photographic process the public could use. Born near Paris in 1787, the son of a court official's clerk, he was apprenticed to an architect and then to a theatre designer, and became a successful painter of stage scenery and panoramas. In 1822 he opened the Diorama, a theatre in which enormous translucent paintings were transformed by changing light behind and in front of them, producing effects of dawn, storm and moonlight. It was a commercial success and it is the origin of his interest: he used a camera obscura to trace scenes, and wanted to fix the image directly. He formed a partnership in 1829 with Nicéphore Niépce, who had produced the first surviving photograph around 1826 with an exposure of many hours using bitumen. Niépce died in 1833, and Daguerre continued alone. His breakthroughs were two. He found that a silvered copper plate treated with iodine vapour and exposed briefly carried a latent image that could be developed with mercury vapour — reducing the exposure from hours to minutes — and he fixed the result with salt, and later hyposulphite of soda on John Herschel's advice. The daguerreotype was announced in January 1839 and described in detail that August. The French government bought the rights and gave the process to the world free, excepting Britain, where Daguerre had patented it days earlier. The images were sharp, unique and not reproducible, which is why Talbot's negative-positive process eventually displaced it. His Diorama burned down in 1839. He died in 1851.
- Lived: 1787 CE – 1851 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: inventor, artist
