88
in monografi eën en thema-artikelen, Alphen aan den Rijn /
Amsterdam, nr. 14 (1990).
Boom, Mattie, ‘Keuze uit de aanwinsten. Schenking foto’s van
E.I. Asser,’ in Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 42(1994).
Boom, Mattie and Hans Rooseboom (eds.), Een nieuwe kunst.
Fotografi e in de 19de eeuw. A New Art. Photography in the
19th century, Gent 1996.
Boom, Mattie, Eduard Isaac Asser 1809-1894, Amsterdam
1997.
Boom, Mattie, ‘De Amsterdamse fotografi etentoonstellingen van
1855,1858 en 1860,’ in I.Th. Leijerzapf, Geschiedenis van de
Nederlandse fotografi e in monografi eën en thema-artikelen,
Alphen aan den Rijn / Amsterdam, nr. 28 (1997).
All photographs by Asser are published in the on line catalogue/
website: http://www.earlyphotography.nl.
ASTRONOMY
The development of astronomy in the 19th century
was in part due to the progress of science, specifi cally
concerning optics, physics, and chemistry which conse-
quently, became a part of photography as well. In terms
of its invention, the new techniques accompanied deep
rooted, scientifi cally based disciplines of calculation
with the advent of astrophysics.
On January 7, 1839, Jean-Baptist Biot, demonstrated
a “retina artifi cial” boundary in front of the Academy of
Science with the daguerreotype. Arago, in the report on
the daguerreotype made before the House of Commons
on July 3, 1839 insisted, particularly, on the possible
applications of photography in the fi eld of science and
the other services the technique could provide. Arago
suggested in the two principal branches of astronomy
and photometry, or the measured intensity of light and
the observation of it, that it was now a possibility to
create photographic charts of the Moon allowing thus
to create “in a few seconds (...) one of the longest, most
meticulous and delicate work in astronomy.” On this
date, Daguerre too collected “the print of the weak light
of the Moon” on a plate, however the image appeared
“fuzzy and low in details.” Continuing Daguerre’s work,
the American astronomer John William Todrape, real-
ized on March 23, 1840, in his observatory in New York,
that several daguerreotypes of the Moon (which are lost
today) 2,5 cm in diameter, with an installation ranging
from 20 to 30 minutes, showed “the principal mountains
of the star.” Noting this diffi cult process, it was necessary
to take precautions in the exposure of the plates, as the
low sensitivity of the daguerreotype, combined with the
very weak luminosity of the photographed object still
constituted major obstacles.
It is important to note that astronomers and physi-
cists were primarily the fi rst to be interested in new
photographic techniques. The latter were concerned
with questions pertaining to the analysis of light and
the settings of optics. Often these astronomers were also
opticians and manufacturers of glass who expressed a
natural interest in the connection between light and opti-
cal lenses. In fact, the word photography was “invented”
during the fi rst months of 1839 by two astronomers.
The fi rst was a Berliner, Johann Heinrich Mädler, who
in 1830 created a drawn chart of the Moon, and later
employed the recently forged term, which appeared
in the columns of Vossische Zeitung on February 25,- The other, John Herschel, was an inventor of
his own process of paper developed photography, and
during February and March in 1839, he used the term
photography on several occasions in his notebooks
which documented his experiments during these months.
That same year he conducted experiments in which he
took photographs in the light of the moon, in Talbot’s
company. Scientists, attracted by the prospect of reli-
able, objective documents and photographers were
collectively interested by the new possibilities of the
medium. The beginning of 1840 saw the fl ourishing of
several experiments with daguerreotype as the base. The
great majority of these plates like the eclipse of 1842,
was photographed in Milan by Majocchi (2mn), and
in Venice by Malacarne. At the observatory in Paris,
under Arago, several research experiments were con-
ducted around the photography of the Sun, as it is an
object of strong luminosity, which seemed to be more
accessible at the time and were conducted in collabora-
tion with, Lerebours, Hippolyte Fizeau, Leon Foucault
and Gustave le Gray between 1842 and 1847. Of this
collaboration, the only daguerreotype to survive was
taken by Fizeau and Foucault on April 2, 1845, which
illustrated the sun. In 1848 in Dresden, Herman Krone
succeeded in photographing two shooting stars, and in
New York, Samuel D. Humphrey, developed two plates
of the moon, which were widely celebrated and the ac-
companying notes appeared in the Daguerreian Journal
on November 1, 1850.
In America, the observatory at Harvard had been
studying astronomy since 1847, and experimented
mostly in the fi eld of the daguerreotype. The profes-
sional photographer, John Adams Whipple, obtained
the fi rst daguerreotype of a star Véga (July 17, 1850),
in the company of George Philips Jump the director of
the observatory, and then after many failures, captured
a daguerreotype of the moon on March 14, 1851. A
few days later, they took a daguerreotype of Jupiter.
Of this production of the beginning of the 1850s were
an estimated 70 plates, of which the location of only
ten of the images is currently known. Exhibited at the
Great Exhibition in London, 1851, these daguerreotypes
of the moon by Whipple and Bond aroused a lot of
interest in the scientifi c community. The comparison
with the engraved and drawn charts of the time, in
particular with that of Bee and Madler of 1837, made
it possible however to reinforce statements made by
their authors, according to whom these images offered