1253
chemicals which were physically hardened by the action
of light and so, eschewing silver salts about which so
much was already known in favour of bitumen of Judea,
coated on to a sheet of glass, hardened by long exposure
to light, and the unhardened areas then dissolved with oil
of lavender. By 1826 he had moved to a pewter base and
had announced his fi ndings and produced what survives
as the world’s oldest photographic image.
By 1828 he had migrated from pewter to the silvered
copper plate which would later become the base of the
daguerreotype, and had returned to exploring the ef-
fect of light on silver salts—in this case silver iodide.
Niepce’s process, however, used iodine to darken the
areas of silver where the bitumen had not been hardened
by the action of light.
The daguerreotype evolved directly from the col-
laboration between Niépce and Daguerre, and after
Niépce’s death in 1833, between Daguerre and Isidore
Niépce. Since Isidore’s fi rst attempts in 1840, many
in the history of photography have sought to clarify
the importance of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s role in
the evolution of the process which would help make
photographic portraiture ubiquitous.
While the daguerreotype bears the Frenchman’s
name, the process which achieved such worldwide
popularity progressed well beyond its inventor’s
achievements. The science of the daguerreotype was
advanced signifi cantly by many practitioners and sci-
entists. Experiments by Antoine Claudet, for example,
increased the sensitivity of the plate considerably, while
arguably the most signifi cant advance was John Fred-
erick Goddard’s discovery of the accelerating effect of
employing bromine—reducing exposures for portraiture
from the impractical to the practical. Despite the sig-
nifi cance of his discovery, Goddard did not profi t from
his scientifi c breakthrough, and unlike Daguerre who
received a French government pension, Goddard lapsed
into poverty, saved only by a public appeal—promoted
by John Werge and Jabez Hughes—which raised enough
money to sustain him into old age.
In the 1840s, scientifi c innovation had no commercial
value without the protection of a patent, and Goddard
had not sought such protection, although arguably it
was his innovation which ensured the daguerreotype’s
long popularity.
In a series of parallel developments,Talbot’s experi-
ments had taken him fi rst to photogenic drawing and
then to the calotype, establishing the negative/positive
process as the ideal foundation for the development
of photography as a low-cost and easily duplicated
medium. Talbot’s chemistry was simple, but by the
early 1850s, albumen-on-glass, waxed paper and wet
collodion had all brought both new refi nement to the
production of the negative, and a widening range of
chemicals being used.
There was often little understanding of the role of
each additional chemical—just a belief that adding them
improved the reliability of the negative medium, and the
consistency of the results.
Thus, in the fi rst issue of the Journal of the Photo-
graphic Society for 1854, Washington Teasdale from
Leeds published a comparison chart showing the
differences and similarities between eight different
versions of le Gray’s Waxed paper process. The chart
demonstrated the huge variations between the strengths
of the chemicals employed by the process’s main propo-
nents—including Vicomte Vigier, Sir William Crookes,
Roger Fenton, and le Gray himself. Teasdale’s table and
accompanying notes showed there was huge variation
in the chemical composition and chemical strength of
the different versions, the recipes ranging from a single
chemical—potassium iodide on its own—in Crookes’
version, to eight in Teasdale’s, while the iodide in
Fenton’s published account was three times the strength
of le Gray’s original formulation. Such variations go a
long way towards explaining why some users found le
Gray’s process unreliable and slow while others found
Fenton’s to be almost assured of success.
Variations in the chemistry of the waxed paper pro-
cess was by no means unique. Every process had its
advocates and its critics. With Frederick Scott Archer’s
wet collodion process, there were ultimately almost
as many versions as there were users! As long as the
manufacturing of the negative material was in the hands
of the user, such wide variation in formulae was inevi-
table, as was the vigorous support each user gave to his
‘improvement.’
In addition to claims about the performance of indi-
vidual chemicals, there was often signifi cant debate over
who had prior claim to a particular process. Niépce’s
claim in France for a share of Daguerre’s fame was
mirrored in Britain by the Rev J. B. Reade’s claim for
priority over Talbot in the invention of the paper nega-
tive. At the time of Frederick Scott Archer’s publication
of the wet collodion process, Gustave le Gray, himself
the inventor of the waxed paper process, claimed to have
proposed—and used—a wet collodion process at least a
year before Archer. (Like Goddard, Archer’s generosity
in seeking no fi nancial reward for his process left him
penniless, and after his untimely death in 1857 a fund
had to be established to raise money for his widow.)
Talbot, for good measure, claimed his patents gave him
control over any process in which a negative was created
from which prints could be made.
By the mid-1850s, however, photographic science en-
tered a period of calm, with most patents being allowed
to lapse, and the photographic community showing
increasing altruism in sharing ideas and experience.
Many photographers soon appreciated the need
for a measure of consistency in their chemistry, and