At about this time, Daguerre announced discoveries that gave photography at least a momentary impetus, but the Daguerre process did not long survive, as it was slow, costly and troublesome. The daguerreotype was made on a thin sheet of copper, silver plated on one side, polished to a high degree of brilliancy, and made sensitive by exposing it to the fumes of iodine. The first daguerreotype made in America, that of Miss Catherine Draper, was exposed for six minutes in strong sunlight, and the face of the sitter thickly powdered, to facilitate the exposure. An exposure today with a modern camera, under similar conditions, could be made in 1⁄1000 of a second.
It was impossible, of course, to find many sitters as patient as Miss Draper—try keeping perfectly quiet for even a minute if you would know why Miss Draper should be ranked as a photographic martyr—and many experiments were made in an attempt to materially shorten the time of exposure. The only real solution, of course, was to find some method where the light had to do only a little of the work, leaving the production of the image itself to chemical action.
Old-Fashioned Photographic Equipment
The first great step in this direction was taken by Fox Talbot in 1841. He found, that if he prepared a sheet of paper with silver iodide and exposed it in the camera, he got only a very faint image, but if, after exposure, he washed over the paper with a solution of silver nitrate and gallic acid, the faint image was built up into a strong picture. And not only was Fox Talbot the first to develop a faint or invisible image; he was also the first to make a negative and use it for printing.
| The First Kodak (1888), Showing Roll Holder and Roll Film for 100 Exposures | The First Daylight Loading Method |
| The First “Folding Kodak” Fitted for Plates or Roll Film | “Dope” Barrel |
In spite of all these advances, photography was almost exclusively a studio proposition, when, in 1880, experiments were begun which were to result in photography that could be universally enjoyed—photography as we know it today. Of course there were amateurs even in those early photographic days, but they were few and far between. There was something about the bulk and weight of the old-time photographic outfit that failed to beget general enthusiasm.
Raw Stock Rolls, Kodak Park