244
Andrew Ross in 1850. John Henry Dallmeyer’s 1862
camera could be operated with a single portrait lens and
panel, or with binocular lenses for stereoscopic photog-
raphy. From the 1860s, the interchangeable lens panel
was a universal feature of bellows camera design.
John Hannavy
See Also: Lenses: 1. 1830s–1850s; Camera
Design: 1 (1830–1840); Camera Design: 2 (1850);
Daguerreotype; Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé;
Giroux, André; Talbot, William Henry Fox; Calotype
and Talbotype; Waxed Paper Negative Processes;
Silvy, Camille; Warnerke, Leon; Eastman, George;
Ottewill, Thomas & Co.; Hare, George; Lemercier,
Lerebours & Bareswill; Richebourg, Pierre-
Ambroise; Dallmeyer, John Henry and Thomas Ross.
Further Reading
Auer, Michael, The Illustrated History of the Camera, Boston:
New York Graphic Society, 1975.
Coe, Brian, Cameras - from Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures,
London: Marshall Cavendish, 1978.
Hunt, Robert, A Manual of Photography, London: Richard Grif-
fi n, 1857.
Sparling, William, Theory and Practice of the Photographic Art,
London: Houlston and Stoneman, 1856 (reprint, New York,
Arno Press, 1973).
Spira, Jonathan (Ed) The History of Photography As Seen Through
the Spira Collection, New York: Aperture, 2001.
Wall, E.J., The Dictionary of Photography, London: Hazel Watson
& Viney, 1897.
CAMERA DESIGN: 1 (1830–1840)
The camera obscura was used by the earlier experi-
menters as the fi rst photographic camera to produce
images using light-sensitive chemicals on a paper or
metal support. Thomas Wedgwood and Humphrey
Davy circa 1801 used one to expose sensitised paper
with limited success. Davy reported in the Journals of
the Royal Institution in 22 June 1802 that ‘the images
formed by means of a camera obscura have been found
too faint to produce, in any moderate time, an effect.’
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1816 also using a camera
obscura was able to produce images but had no means
to fi x them. Daguerre, continuing Niépce’s work, car-
ried on using the camera obscura in the development
of his own process.
William Henry Fox Talbot in late 1834 or early 1835
also made use of a camera obscura to expose his sensi-
tised paper but found that the exposure was too long to
make a strong impression. In the summer of 1835 Talbot
had more success using new chemistry and a camera
obscura made from a small box and produced the well-
known Lattice Window image of August 1835. Talbot
also made use of a solar microscope to make images.
Niépce and Talbot also made use of the fi rst purpose
built photographic cameras. Niépce, for his experi-
ments using bitumen-coated pewter plates, constructed
cameras in the form of a plain box and with two boxes
sliding within each other—a design that was resurrected
and became popular in the 1850s. These designs offered
rigidity, a means of securing the plate, a fi xing for the
lens and a size that was more appropriate to the optics
then available. These two forms of camera were based
on typical camera obscura designs.
Talbot also made himself or had constructed small
boxes for the purposes of making photogenic drawings.
Reputedly these were made by the village carpenter in
Lacock but Arnold argues that their crude construction
would suggest that they were made by Talbot himself.
These crude wood boxes were briefl y described by
Constance Talbot as ‘mousetraps,’ a name that has en-
dured. The cameras were no more than 2 or 3 inch cubes
with a simple brass bound lens at one end and a back to
which sensitised paper was pinned. Later versions of the
cameras were better constructed with refi nements such
as a viewing hole to examine the progress of exposure
and detachable plate holders.
The announcement of Daguerre’s process on 7 Janu-
ary 1839 and Talbot’s photogenic drawing process on
25 January 1839 provided the catalyst for commercial
manufacture of photographic cameras. Daguerre’s rela-
tive by marriage Alphonse Giroux of Paris launched
a sliding box daguerreotype camera designed by Da-
guerre. The camera was to make daguerreotype plates
up to 16.5 × 21.5cm., which became known a whole-
plate, and had a lens from Chevalier at a cost of 400
francs. It was available from 21 August 1839 the day
of the public disclosure of Daguerre’s process. Giroux
had signed a contract with Daguerre for the sole right
to make daguerreotype apparatus under Daguerre’s
direction. The camera bore a seal on one side featuring
Daguerre’s signature and was the fi rst commercially
manufactured camera.
Other manufacturers soon produced their own de-
signs of camera. Charles Chevalier of Paris produced
a collapsible box form camera that offered a degree of
portability limited only by the accompanying processing
apparatus that was required to be carried. Alexis Gaudin
designed a box form camera manufactured by N. P. Le-
rebours in 1841 for 7 × 8 cm. daguerreotype plates. The
camera was contained with all its associated chemicals
and processing equipment in a box. In America by 1842
John Plumbe had produced a sliding box camera copied
from Daguerre’s original design for 2¼ × 3¼ inch plates.
The camera may have been constructed for Plumbe by
a Boston scientifi c instrument maker. In the later 1840s
what became known as the American-pattern of boxform
camera with chamfered front edges became popular al-
though there is some evidence that this design had been
copied from an 1840 design by Chevalier.