1308
mirrored in the way daguerreotype experiments and
then businesses popped up in virtually every settled area,
the main economic and cultural centers merely lead-
ing the way. For most of the 19th century, and despite
some important exceptions, federal departments and
especially Congress were quite timid in promoting the
use of photography, and were even more so in creating
conservation and evaluation instruments. Yet the contrast
that some historians have drawn between an “academic”
Europe and an “entrepreneurial” America must not be
overestimated. No existing American institution in 1839
would have had the power, the authority or the design
to infl uence the course of photography in any way
comparable to European policies of protection and pro-
motion. An exception may be made for the U.S. Patent
Offi ce, which granted between 1842 and 1862 at least
fi fty patents concerning mostly minor improvements on
the daguerreotype, but whose action was of necessity
limited to the realm of technology and even then was
often contested or disregarded. Beyond this, however,
many academic institutions participated in their own
way in the development of the daguerreotype. In many
parts of the United States, universities and medical
schools served as the fi rst centers for information and
experimentation, and this was no less true in the major
cities. In Philadelphia—America’s old capital —, the
Franklin Institute was called upon to evaluate Daguerre’s
process, and shortly published an “explanation” and
then an English translation of Daguerre’s manual, while
in May 1840 the American Philosophical Society was
shown portraits of its members, produced through tech-
nical improvements on Daguerre’s instructions which,
based on experiments by chemists from the University
of Pennsylvania, came to be known as the “Philadelphia
method.” In New York, the leading role that Morse and
John W. Draper played in the fi rst months refl ected their
connections to both New York University and Morse’s
National Academy of Design, the latter a mutual aid
society, rather than a formal tribunal of art. Although
other groups existed in New York without any such
affi liation, and although the Morse-Draper group was
short-lived and mostly informal, it was Morse’s author-
ity that drew many apprentices to his studio for lessons
in daguerreotypy (among whom were Mathew B. Brady
and several other future photographic greats). Finally,
associations in the larger cities often held fairs where
daguerreotypes were exhibited, the most important of
these being the American Institute’s fair in New York,
which awarded medals for daguerreotype from 1840 on,
Mathew Brady receiving his fi rst medal there in 1844
and his fi rst gold medal in 1849.
Between 1850 and 1855, increasing competition,
signalled by price wars and various attempts at control-
ling the market through patents, and compounded by
the emergence of the new negative processes, caused a
great deal of tension in the profession and led to the for-
mation of “protective” or “mutual” organizations. The
most famous of several patents that were awarded, with
little or no justifi cation, for secondary improvements on
the glass processes was the “bromide patent,” covering
an accelerating formula for collodion on glass, which
was one of three granted in 1854 to James A. Cutting,
and which virtually enabled him to control the entire
sector of glass photography, causing bitter corporative
feuds. Along with the anti-patent and price wars, an-
other concern that initially and durably underlay trade
organizations was the desire to “elevate” photography,
which meant both to expand its uses and to legitimize it
as a form of art. These factors merged in the formation
in 1851 of the fi rst two American photographic societ-
ies: the New York State Daguerrean Association, which
aimed primarily at setting fl oor prices and creating a
“fraternal” spirit in the profession; and the American
Daguerre Association, whose fi rst secretary was Samuel
D. Humphrey, editor of the world’s fi rst specialized
periodical, The Daguerrean Journal (founded 1850).
Humphrey’s goal was to promote taste in photography
and counter its “humbug” reputation. Neither one of
these early photographic societies survived for more
than a couple of years, and, by 1852, a third one ap-
peared in New York on a similar platform of mutual
aid. In these early efforts to organize the profession and
more generally to “elevate” photography’s dignity one
must also include the photographic competition at the
New York Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1853, the fi rst
World Fair in the United States, where daguerreotypes
still dominated in numbers but were outraced for the
top award by photographs on paper.
In the decade between 1859 and 1869, as the da-
guerreotype was defi nitively supplanted by glass pho-
tography, several more attempts at organization betrayed
the same protective impulse. In New York in 1859 the
American Photographical Society (APS) was founded;
it was later renamed the Photographic Section of the
American Institute. Among its founders were some of
American photography’s pioneers, such as Henry Hunt
Snelling, Charles A. Seely, John Johnson and Joseph
Dixon, but relatively few active photographers. Indeed,
this society aimed at placing American photography “in
a position equally as elevated as in Europe,” as Seely
put it, and therefore it called rather on scientists (such
as John W. Draper, Lewis M. Rutherford, Robert Ogden
Doremus), and, in William Welling’s words, “some of
the foremost business, professional and social leaders
of the day.” The APS discussed technical novelties and
scientifi c discoveries, but also various applications
of photography and even photography’s past, some
members tossing around the idea of a photographic
museum in New York. In these various aspects, the
APS echoed changes in the social and cultural status