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Scovill (1789–1857), Frederick Leavenworth, and
David Hayden in 1811. In 1827, Hayden and Leaven-
worth retired and James’s younger brother, merchant
William Henry Scovill (1796–1854), purchased the
men’s interest in what had become one of the two most
prominent button factories in the country. Under the
brothers’ leadership, the fi rm, renamed J.M.L. & W.
H. Scovill, grew in success and divisions, including
an expanding auxiliary business of rolled brass and
plated metal.
In 1842, J.M.L and W.H. Scovill became the fi rst
and largest manufacturer of daguerreotype plates in
the United States after perfecting a plate that was fl at
and of a better quality than the popular French imports.
According to the company papers at Harvard University,
the company supplied such prominent daguerreians as
Samuel Broadbent, Jeremiah Gurney, and A. Southworth
& Co. To remain competitive over the next decade, the
company expanded their photographic products line to
include gilded metal mats, preservers, and cases. The
New York City salesroom established in 1846 made
over $60,000 a year in sales on mats and preservers
alone. By 1851, the fi rm was advertised as a dealer of
daguerreotype materials and promoted such novelties
as a folding case for family portraiture and a case for
sepulchral daguerreotypes.
In 1850, all the company interests, including the pho-
tographic division, were incorporated under the Scovill
Manufacturing Company, which continued to grow in
market outlets, production plants, and profi ts. In 1851,
company agent Samuel Holmes established Western
markets as far away as California. In 1857, the fi rm
bought the factory of S. Peck & Co. in New Haven, Con-
necticut, which produced plastic photograph cases and
camera parts, and in 1867 acquired the American Optical
Co., a manufacturer of cameras and other photographic
apparatus in New York. By 1873, company growth had
led to the establishment of a branch of the photographic
division in Birmingham, England and the completion of
a new warehouse in New York City at 419–421 Broome
Street containing offi ces, salesrooms, storage, and a
darkroom for customers. By 1874, the profi ts of the
photography division totaled over $1,000,000.
In 1868, Frederick J. Kingsbury accepted control
of the company following the deaths of the Scovill
brothers and the retirement of Scovill Buckingham, the
Scovills’nephew. Under Kingsbury’s administration,
the photographic division of the fi rm prospered through
the ingenuity of company upstart Washington Irving
Adams. Adams, a former daguerreotypist, entered the
employ of the Scovill Manufacturing Company as an
entry clerk in 1858 and quickly acquired increasingly
infl uential roles and responsibilities. Between 1870 and
1871 Adams assumed the leadership of the American
Optical Co. and founded the company periodical, Pho-
tographic Times. In 1875, Adams became president of
the S. Peck & Co. and in 1878 became the company
agent in charge of the New York business. Adams also
served as the fi rst Vice-President of the Centennial
Photographic Company and was a Chairman of the
Executive Committee of the National Photographic
Association.
Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, under Adams’s
guidance during the peak of a rivalry with E. & H.T.
Anthony & Co., Scovill’s interest in the photographic
market diversifi ed even further. In the early 1870s,
prolifi c advertisements in the company periodical and
the Philadelphia Photographer promoted apparatus and
materials for every aspect of photography, including
tripods, lanterns, developers, rollers, trays, negative
frames, and studio props. The company also introduced
the Scovill Photographic Series of training manuals.
With the introduction of a multiplying camera in 1878,
Scovill became synonymous with cameras as well. The
company’s cornering of the market in competition with
Anthony & Co. progressed even further when around
1881 Scovill became the sole distributor of Carbutt dry
plates, a move that signaled Adams’s business savvy
in anticipating the growing amateur market. Conse-
quently, in 1882 the Scovill Manufacturing Company
began advertising cheap amateur outfi ts that included
camera, dry plate holder, tripod, and lens. In 1885, the
Waterbury view camera was introduced as a part of
the profusely advertised outfi ts and quickly became
an American classic. During this time, the company
also displayed its photographic equipment at several
exhibits, including annual exhibitions of the National
Photographic Association and the Photographic Asso-
ciation of America as well as the Centennial Exhibition
of 1876, where the company received an award for
photographic apparatus.
Given the success of the photographic department
and following George Eastman’s 1887 rejection of a
Scovill offer to consolidate photographic businesses,
Scovill Manufacturing Co., opted to form an inde-
pendent fi rm, Scovill & Adams, which manufactured,
sold, and acted as agents for photographic equipment
and supplies. With the creation of the new fi rm in
1889, Scovill & Adams became a leading innovator
in camera design and earned several patents related
to camera construction. Between 1891 and 1898, the
company introduced the Henry Clay folding camera,
one of the fi rst self-casing, folding bellows cameras;
the Solograph folding plate camera; a spy camera; and
a panoramic camera equipped with a swinging lens. The
new fi rm continued to publish the Photographic Times
and the renamed Scovill & Adams Photographic Series
of training manuals. It also remained a leading supplier
of photographic equipment and apparatus nationally and
internationally, including Central and South America.