Do you know why is World Photo Day?
On August 19, 1839, the French government acquired the patent of the daguerreotype and announced that the new process would be donated as a gift to the world.
The daguerreotype was a revolutionary photographic process developed and named after its inventor Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. It is a unique image on a silvered copper plate, sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a camera obscura, developed in mercury fumes and fixed with salt water or sodium thiosulphate. It has a mirror-like surface and it’s very fragile.
The invention of the daguerreotype was revealed in an announcement published in January, 1839, in the official bulletin of the French Academy of Sciences. Shortly after the public announcement, Daguerre published a manual on daguerreotyping and, despite the difficulty of transporting the equipment, the process immediately attracted devotees who rushed to purchase cameras, plates, and chemicals. The French press characterized the phenomenon as a craze or “dagueréotypomanie.”
The daguerreotype marked a breakthrough in photographic history and an opportunity for ordinary people to capture their own memories.
