138
technical viability was secured to a great extent by Brit-
ish entrepreneur Richard Beard. While Beard could not
patent photography per se, he acquired rights on a series
of modifi cations and improvements which constituted
a new production process. His agent took out the fi rst
Belgian patent in photography on 23 February 1841
for “an improved apparatus for transferring drawings
and natural objects to metallic surfaces prepared by an
improved process.” The improved process consisted of
the use of bromine and iodine in equal parts, combined
with a description of the lay-out of a portrait studio
employing a Wolcott mirror camera, referred to in the
patent as “the refl ecting apparatus.”
A year after taking out his Belgian patent, Beard
advertised the “Photographic portrait establishment
of the Royal Polytechnic Institution of London, and
at the Bazar Pantechnique, near the Park in Brussels.
The photographic process for making portraits is an
improvement of Monsieur Daguerre’s method. Mr
Richard Beard has just obtained a patent for Belgium.
Portraits taken by this method require several seconds
of exposure only and possess a softness and a delicacy
which can only be obtained by the process of Monsieur
Daguerre.” (Journal de Bruxelles, 11 March 1842).
Beard’s operator, an Englishman by the name of Bill-
ing, immediately faced competition from the locally
established fi rm of opticians, the Brand brothers, and
from Vanmalderen in Liège. It is not known how long
the Beard studio operated but the small format of the
plate which the Wolcott mirror camera was capable of
holding must have fi nally told against him. Beard never
managed to institute in Belgium the franchising system
which had been so successful in England. A risk-taker by
nature, he was ultimately to bankrupt himself. At least
Beard had demonstrated the commercial possibilities
of the new technology, but it was left to other individu-
als, with fi rmer roots in the local marketplace, to see
photography through the next phase.
This third phase in the timetable of photography’s
socialisation may be summed up as the period when
invention becomes innovation. The technology was
now being used more widely and demand for it began
to grow. In Belgium, this phase lasted about fi fteen
years—from 1846 (when the fi rst permanent portrait
studios were operational in the major towns) until 1860.
During this time, the practice of photography, concen-
trated almost exclusively in the hands of professionals,
was characterised by two distinct methods of exploita-
tion. In the larger centres of population—Brussels,
Liège, Antwerp and Ghent—permanent portrait studios
were erected. Outlying districts and smaller towns were
served by short-stay itinerant photographers who would
usually operate in a hotel courtyard or garden. The
town of Tournai offers a typical case study. Travelling
daguerreotypists were recorded as visiting the town
in 1843 (Mr Guyard and one anonymous itinerant),
1844 (Messrs Guyard and Housselot), 1848 (Edouard)
followed by a certain Dondez “Professeur de daguer-
réotype” periodically between 1852 and 1857. The
fi rst permanent professional photographers in Tournai,
Lefebvre-Midavaine and Louis Duchâtel, began operat-
ing in 1853 and 1855 respectively.
In phase three of the photography’s take-up, the
medium cannot yet be considered as economically sig-
nifi cant in Belgium. A handful of full-time practitioners,
supplemented by their itinerant colleagues, had little
economic impact. There was no great reservoir of well-
heeled amateurs, eager to drive the innovation process,
as in Great Britain and France, so that Chevalier Dubois
de Nehaut and Edmond Fierlants had to look to Paris for
intellectual stimulus. In the Belgian population census of
1856 (the fi rst time that photography is mentioned), the
term “photographer” is not autonomous but subsumed
into a miscellaneous list allied to the printing trade,
comprising “playing cards, cardboard, wax and signets,
pencil manufacturers, illuminators, photographers,
manufacturers of printers’ ink, fount makers, type and
other engravers.” The concern of the Belgian authorities
at the laggardly nature of take-up found concrete form
in a willingness to support individual initiatives in the
domain, by Guillaume Claine and Edmond Fierlants,
especially when these initiatives could be linked to a
reformulation of the new state’s cultural heritage. A
similar preoccupation underlay the organization of the
fi rst two photography exhibitions in Belgium in 1856
and 1857.
The small number of patents taken out in Belgium are
an accurate indicator the negligible economic impact of
photography until 1860. Thus in the 1840s only nine pat-
ents were issued in the domain, rising to 55 in the 1850s.
There is a clear jump in the 1860s to a level of between
10 and 20 per year, a range which remained constant
well into the 1880s. The origin of individual patents also
reveals the position of Belgium in the matter of technol-
ogy transfer. As might be expected, about 90 percent
of patents are of foreign origin, typifying Belgium as a
“consumer” rather than an “initiator” of technology, and
dependent on other countries throughout 19th century.
Furthermore, the diffusion of know-how can be inferred
from the rate of transfer of patent rights to third parties,
a central aspect in acquiring, managing and exploiting
new technology. No such transfers were registered in
Belgium in the 1840s and 1850s. Photographic tech-
nology began to be used by individuals other than the
patentee in a modest way from 1860 onwards; the fi rst
such case being the transfer of Dutchman Eduard Asser’s
patent for his photolithographic printing process to the
Brussels printers and lithographers Simonau & Toovey,
the fi rst photomechanical printing process exploited in
Belgium. Previous to this, the only photographic print-