927
and valuable papers might be transmitted by post, and
secrets might be placed in spaces not larger than a full
stop or a blot of ink.” Microphotography was success-
fully employed to hide information from enemies for the
fi rst time in the Franco-Prussian War. In October 1870
Charles de Lafollye, of the Service de correspondences
extraordinaires, assisted by Gabriel Blaise, produced
the fi rst microphotographic military dispatches. Mes-
sages were hand written in large script on cards and
then photographed. The resulting prints were inserted
in hollowed out quills and attached to a feather on a
pigeon’s tale. Later that year a letterpress was adopted
for printing the messages, allowing copies to be kept
which can be viewed in the Musée Postal, Brussles.
Before escaping Paris in balloon named Niépce in 1870,
Dagron was contracted to set up a similar pigeon post
that would carry military and private communications
back into occupied France. His prints represented a
three-fold improvement over those of Blaise, recording
the same amount of information on a sheet about 11 × 6
mm. Microphotography received more limited use in the
American Civil War, where one regiment reportedly sent
microphotograph dispatches across confederate lines
pasted inside coat buttons. Noses, ears and fi ngernails
became the hiding place for microscopic secrets in the
Russo-Japanese war of 1904–1905. Brewster’s prophecy
was fi nally fulfi lled during World War I, when messages
were sent to spies hidden on top of printed periods and
commas in magazines.Microphotography in Nineteenth-Century
Visual Culture
The instant demand Dancer and Dagron discovered for
microphotographs may seem surprising if it were not
for the immense desire to explore all modes of visual-
ity that characterizes the latter half of the nineteenth
century. This passion for new ways of seeing and being
seen inspired the invention of myriad optical trinkets
and devices that could exist anywhere on a continuum
that ran between, but always blended, spectacular en-
tertainment and educational intent. After the invention
of the achromatic microscope in 1823, microscopy
became an important element in this visual culture.
Produced cheaply in the 1830s, microscopes became a
common addition to the bourgeois parlor, where they
offered a recreational activity that fi t into a public cam-
paign promoting the natural sciences as an appropriateMICROPHOTOGRAPHY
Foucault, Jean-Bernard-Leon and O. G.
Mason. Plate VI Cours de Microscope
Complementaire des Etudes
Medicales...Atlas execute d’apres
nature au Microscope-Daguerreotype.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The J. Paul Getty Museum.