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Dancer made known the results of his work through pa-
pers to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
and the various Manchester and Liverpool photographic
societies. The professional and personal relationships he
subsequently expanded on provides the key to the rapid
development and understanding of the photographic pro-
cesses in the Manchester area. Dancer’s observations were
regularly recorded in both the Memoirs and Proceedings
of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and
in the Liverpool and Manchester Photographic Journal
(later to become the British Journal of Photography).
There is also a direct connection with the Edinburgh
circle through constant correspondence and argument
between Dancer and Sir David Brewster on the subject
of stereoscopy. Similarly, Dancer was in correspondence
with Frederick Scott Archer, who had himself spent his
early life in Manchester.
In the year prior to his death he attempted to defi ne
his contribution to photography in a letter under the
title “Early Photography in Liverpool and Manchester”
published in the British Journal of Photography on 11
June 1886.
“Having many reasons for believing that I was one of the
fi rst to practice the Daguerreotype process in this country,
and also to introduce camera photography into Liverpool
and Manchester.... Unfortunately for my purpose, the
early descriptions of Daguerre’s method of proceeding
were crude and obscure. In consequence of this I had six
weeks of hard work, numerous failures, and accidentally
was nearly suffocated by the vapour of iodine, before I
obtained satisfactory results. Being a practical optician,
the camera used was one of my own construction, such as
I had frequently supplied to artists for tracing the outline
of views in the camera. An achromatic object-glass from
a telescope gave fair defi nition. My photographs were
objects of great curiosity to scientifi c friends and acquain-
tances.... At the request of friends I publicly exhibited the
Daguerreotype process to an audience of 1500 people.
The object then photographed was a fl ea, magnifi ed as
large as a 7 x 5 (inch) silvered plate would permit, the
instrument being a gas microscope of my own construc-
tion. Many other microscope objects were enlarged, and
some were reduced. One, a printed placard, was reduced
to an eighth of an inch square, being perfectly legible
under the microscope.”
The daguerreotype was not Dancer’s fi rst excursion
in photography. He observed that the “accounts given
of the beautiful pictures (daguerreotypes).... induced
me to abandon the photographic paper process.” We can
assume from this that from 1839, or even earlier, Dancer
had experimented with Talbot’s process. As with other
individuals of this period Dancer would have been more
impressed by the defi nition of the daguerreotype rather
than the opportunity to make multiple prints offered by
Talbot’s photogenic drawings. The links between Talbot
and Dancer’s father are strong, with their mutual interest
in Arabic, Hebrew and cuneiform scripts. At the time of
Dancer’s father’s death in 1835, a connection between
Talbot and Dancer would have been established.
When in 1841 Dancer came to live in Manchester
he realised that the daguerreotype process had not been
practised in the city. He then sold daguerreotype ap-
paratus and taught the process to John Dale, a chemist,
and Joseph Sidebotham, a calico printer and dyer. From
that time many Mancunians became amateur photog-
raphers and “it soon became a popular amusement.”
In November the same year, Richard Beard opened
a Daguerreotype Portrait Gallery in rooms over the
Manchester Exchange.
Dancer’s greatest claim to fame is his invention of
microphotography. Dancer referred to his productions
as microscopic photographs; the term microphotography
was introduced following a public disagreement in the
pages of the Liverpool and Manchester Photographic
Journal over Dancer’s priority of the microphotograph
between Joseph Sidebotham supporting Dancer and the
Editor of the Journal, George Shadbolt. In 1839, only a
few months after the introduction of the process, Dancer
produced greatly reduced images on a Daguerreotype
plate but these could only be usefully viewed at 20
diameters magnifi cation. The image structure was too
coarse and the refl ectivity of the image may also have
been too low for convenient examination at higher mag-
nifi cations. Dancer’s earliest successful results date from
February 1852, although there may be an argument for
an earlier date, and were based on Scott Archer’s wet
collodion process. This adequately fulfi lled Dancer’s
requirements and he soon produced minute images
containing groups of portraits in a circle of 1/16 inch
diameter. Dancer produced microphotographs com-
mercially and sold the images mounted on a 3 inch ×
1 inch microscope slide. Sir David Brewster exhibited
Dancer’s microphotographs to the Academie des Sci-
ences, Paris in 1857 and later in Paris and Rome. In
Rome, Dancer’s microphotographs were shown to the
Pope. Dancer also succeeded in producing graticule
images by photographic means.
In 1852 Dancer invented a binocular stereoscopic
camera. The idea had also been brought forward by
Brewster in 1847. An instrument was actually made in
1849, the only known model of Dancer’s camera, but
was destroyed in 1940. An improved version, an instanta-
neous camera patented on 5 September 1856 (Patent No
2064), is better known. Its features included magazine
loading, a spirit level and a double rotating shutter.
Dancer’s inventions and innovations were not lim-
ited to photography. He was a passionate and talented
inventor in many fi elds. He discovered the basis of
electrotyping by depositing copper electrolytically on an
engraved copper plate. In 1838 he introduced the porous
pot for the Daniel cell, and these pots were later used