THE ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



33 



"tion of hypophosphite of sodium. That 

 took off the chloride of silver that was 

 not acted upon by the light and he pre- 

 served the pictures. Some of the first 

 pictures that he made were rather cu- 

 rious. I have not one of his original 

 pictures ; I wish I had, but I have a 

 ■picture made in the same manner. He 

 took a piece of paper and saturated it 

 with salt (he said that he used Bristol 

 drying paper, which was a peculiar 

 paper, made at that time in Eng- 

 land). This was soaked in chloride of 

 sodium or common salt, and then it was 

 dipped and had flowed over it nitrate of 

 silver Therefore he had in the pores of 

 the paper chloride of silver in very inti- 

 mate contact with the paper. Then he 

 took such objects as ferns and pieces of 

 paper, cut it in various shapes, and laid 

 it on the paper. That produced such 

 an effect as where the objects had laid 

 they had the white impression. If you 

 took this out in the sunlight it would all 

 get black. But he made this important 

 discovery and thus preserved the picture 

 This was the first photograph made. We 

 do that to-day, and produce other pic- 

 tures with various other compounds, but 

 I will speak of that later. 



In the year 1824 we hear of another 

 Frenchman (now, remember this was a 

 long while ago, in 18 19, and we had no 

 photographs yet, although you might call 

 that a photograph (exhibiting the fern 

 picture) yet it is not. In the year 1824 

 we hear of another Frenchman who was 

 a scene-painter at a theatre in Paris, and 

 he had been using the camera obscura to 

 obtain pictures from nature from which 

 to paint his scenery. That is to say he 

 had a tent built something like that 

 (drawing figure on blackboard) with a 

 lens something like that that was part of 

 a right angled prism, and this light com- 

 ing from the view, the image was formed 

 in here and spread out upon a table from 



which he could make a drawing, lie 

 used that and was much annoyed at the 

 time it took to get those pictures. He 

 was very impatient, like a great many 

 other Frenchmen. He conceived the 

 idea of "fixing these pictures" as 'he 

 called them. He did not want to have 

 the trouble of drawing them. He said: 

 " If I could only find some way of getting 

 that fixed on the surface without the 

 trouble of drawing it it would be a great 

 convenience." This Frenchman was 

 Louis Daguerre, really the father of 

 photography. Now he worked inde- 

 pendently for some time, when he met 

 Niepse, the Niepse that had been work- 

 ing on bitumen and oil of lavender, and 

 they formed a kind of partnership in 1829. 

 Now, remember, 18 19 was the time that 

 Sir John Kerschel had discovered hypo- 

 phospite of sodium and its action on these 

 silver compounds. They formed a part- 

 nership in order to work out "scene 

 pictures " as they called them. In the 

 year 1833 Niepse died — got tired of the 

 work pretty much, I suppose — and Da- 

 guerre continued the work. What his 

 early experiments were we have verv 

 doubtful records of. Daguerre did not 

 seem to keep very good records. In the 

 year 1839, little more than fifty years ago t 

 he communicated to the French govern- 

 ment a method for making pictures in the 

 camera upon metallic plates. In other 

 words he divulged the secret of the 

 first photographic picture we have — the 

 daguerreotype. This was such a great 

 success and such a wonderful dis- 

 covery that the French government 

 pensioned Daguerre for his life time, and 

 by an agreement with them the process 

 became public property on August 10th, 

 1839. Now I have the good fortune to 

 have here to-night the daguerreotype ap- 

 paratus. This is practically all the para- 

 phernalia of the daguerreotype. First of 

 all was the camera (and you must pardon 



