1209
organized for the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in
- Granted only a small panel at the end of a divid-
ing panel instead of the 12-foot wall he requested, Root
was able to display only a fraction of the collection of
original early material he had assembled, much of it ob-
tained directly from Philadelphia’s pioneer daguerrians.
This collection—which included some of the earliest
and most important examples of American daguerreo-
types—remained largely intact after the Centennial and
afterwards, and was eventually acquired by the Library
of Congress, where it represents one of the great trea-
sures in the Library’s collection of photography.
When Marcus Root died in 1888 as a consequence
of injuries received in a streetcar accident three years
earlier, he was remembered as “one of the fi rst daguerre-
otypists in America”—meaning one of the best and
most successful. Indeed, portrait plates by Marcus Root
typify and epitomize American studio daguerreotypy at
its best, and good examples of his work are prized by
collectors. In the end, however, Root’s real importance
lies not in his art, but in his writing and in his prescient
understanding of the importance of preserving the story
and the artifacts of photography’s history.
Will Stapp
See also: Cornelius, Robert; and Mayall, John Jabez
Edwin.
Further Reading
Dilley, Clyde H., “Marcus Aurelius Root: Heliographer,”
TheDaguererian Annual 1991, Eureka, CA: The Daguerreian
Society, 1991, 42–47.
Foresta, Merry A, and John Wood, Secrets of the Dark Chamber:
the Art of the American Daguerreotype. Washington, D.C.:
The Smithsonian Institution Press for the Nationaml Museum
of American Art, 1965.
Johnson, William S., Nineteenth Century Photography: An
Annotated Bibliography, 1938–1879, Boston: G.K. Hall &
Co., 1990.
Newhall, Beaumont, The Daguerreotype in America, New York:
Dover Publications, 1976.
Rinhardt, Floyd, and Marion Rinhart, The American Daguerreo-
type. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1981.
Root, Marcus Aurelius, The Camera and the Pencil or the He-
liographic Art, Philadelphia: M.A. Root, 1864. (Facsimile
edition, Pawlet, VT: Helios, 1971)
——, Philosphical Theory and Practice of Penmanship... In
Three Parts...Each Part in Four Books, Philadelphia: A.W.
Harrison, 1842.
Rudisill. Richard, Mirror Image: The Infl uence of the Daguerreo-
type on American Society, Albuquerque: Universiry of New
Mexico Press, 1971.
Stapp, William F., Robert Cornelius: Portraits from the Dawn
of Photography, Washnington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press for the National Portrait Gallery, 1983.
Welling, William, Photography in America: The Formative Years,
1839–1900, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company: 1978.
Wood, John, ed., America and the Daguerreotype. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1991.
ROSLING, ALFRED (1802–1882)
English
Alfred Rosling was a London timber merchant from a
Quaker family who, as early as 1846, made large-scale
stereo still-life calotype studies for use in a Wheatstone
viewer. He was a founder member of The Photographic
Society, becoming its treasurer in 1859, and The Pho-
tographic Exchange Club. He exhibited 20 landscapes
from paper negatives plus four microphotographs from
collodion negatives, in the fi rst photographic exhibition,
at the Society of Arts in 1852. Like George Shadbolt,
who was also a timber merchant, Rosling was an early
experimenter with microscopic photography.
He used calotype, waxed-paper ,as well as collo-
dion negatives, favoring the French chemist Dr .J.M.
Taupenot’s dry collodion process.
In 1859 Rosling and his family moved to Reigate
where they became neighbors of the famous photog-
rapher Francis Frith and in 1860 Rosling’s 22 year-old
daughter, Mary Ann, married fellow Quaker Frith,
38, who had recently returned from his travels to the
Middle East. Rosling’s landscape and tree studies were
later published by Frith and many of his views taken
throughout Britain were used in early photographically
illustrated books.
Rosling’s work, which is mainly known through his
Exchange Club studies, as well as the views published in
the 1860’s by Frith, is always technically accomplished
and carefully composed.
Ian SumnerROSS, ANDREW & THOMAS
(1798–1859)
Of all the British photographic lens manufacturers the
fi rm of Ross was the most signifi cant and long-lasting
with an involvement in photography’s British origins,
innovations in optical design throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries and a history which only ended
in the third-quarter of the twentieth century.
Andrew Ross was apprenticed to John Corless an
optician and instrument maker in 1813, and worked
with the optician Gilbert until 1829. By 1830 he had
established his own business as an optician, mathemati-
cal and philosophical instrument maker and by 1839
was trading under the name of Andrew Ross & Co.
Ross remained involved in the business until his death
in 1859 training his son, Thomas (1818–1870), who was
to succeed to the business and John Henry Dallmeyer
(1830–1885). Dallmeyer married Andrew Ross’s sec-
ond daughter Hannah, and was left one-third of Ross’s
fortune of over £20,000.
Thomas Ross and Dallmeyer separated and Dall-
meyer established his own optical business in 1860. The