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and in applying it to science. Talbot, Sir John Herschel
and Sir David Brewster in Great Britain, Jean Baptiste
Biot, Hippolyte Fizeau, and Leon Foucault in France,
and Samuel Morse and John Draper in the USA, are just
some of the scientists that made invaluable contribu-
tions. Much of scientifi c work involves careful observa-
tion and the potential of photography to be an invaluable
aid to the information gathering, analysing, recording,
and storing process was immediately recognised. Anna
Atkins’ privately printed British Algae: Cyanotype
Impressions, was a collection of contact impressions
produced in what later became known as the ‘blueprint
process,’ invented by Herschel in 1842. Issued in parts
between 1843 and 1853, it was possibly the fi rst serious
application of photography to scientifi c publication.
The study of the infi nitely small and infi nitely distant
were revolutionised by photography. Talbot’s fi rst views
through a microscope were made in the 1830s, as were
daguerreotype specimens by the Frenchman, Alfred
Donne. In 1844 Donne, with Leon Foucault, was able to
produce daguerreotype plates of blood cells as an aid for
illustrations for an atlas of microscopic anatomy. As the
1840s progressed increasing numbers of investigators
using both of the major processes produced photomi-
crographs of an astonishingly high quality. John Draper
at New York University made the fi rst recorded photo-
graph of the moon through a telescope in 1840 and two
years later made a daguerreotype of the spectrum of the
sun. During the next few years, several photographers
recorded solar and lunar eclipses. As Talbot perceptively
wrote to Herschel as early as 1841, “there appears to
be no end to the prospect of scientifi c research which
photography has opened out.”
The great debate as to whether photography was
itself an art began during the 1840s. During its early
days, photography was widely termed “the new art”
but that did not mean that it was automatically seen as
being artistic. In the 1840s the word art had a wider ap-
plication than is common today and was applied to any
number of skills, crafts, practices and industrial pursuits
that would not now be accepted as artistic. Nevertheless,
in high art’s Romantic period, perhaps photography
had that hint of mystery that appealed for the infl uence
of painters on early photography was immediate and
profound. Unsurprisingly, paintings and drawings infl u-
enced the composition of many early photographs. As
Hill demonstrated, an artistic eye could be a great asset,
even to a commercial photographer. Many painters took
up photography; some practised their traditional skills
alongside photography. A host of minor artists were used
to hand colour daguerreotypes; photographs on paper
were also sometimes coloured or retouched by hand.
Photography was widely used to copy works of art and
was to become a major factor in the popularisation of
art during the nineteenth century.
By the end of the 1840s, photography was fi rmly
established and becoming organised. Patent restric-
tions in England were irksome but that was a problem
for the next decade. The fi rst photographic societies
were being formed and a growing number of people,
albeit from a limited privileged group, were practis-
ing photography as a hobby. People were becoming
more used to seeing photographic likenesses and to
appreciate that photography could represent the world
around them with an accuracy undreamed of by previ-
ous generations. After the rapid improvements earlier
in the decade, technical development was steady rather
than spectacular. The typical camera still resembled
the pre-photographic camera obscura but was usually
purpose built and professionally made. The home-
made cigar box and spectacle lens type of instrument
described by Draper in 1840 was likely to have been
discarded. A new industry was growing up as certain
chemists and instrument makers began to specialise
as photographic manufacturers and dealers. By 1847
the London dealer, Horne, Thornthwaite and Wood,
was advertising a range of over a dozen cameras with
prices ranging from a guinea to forty pounds. Improved
lenses were being offered although the Voigtlander
Petzval remained highly regarded. The anonymous
author of a British manual, Photography Made Easy
(c 1845), complained of “no English lens being at
all comparable, as we believe, with the Voigtlander
for inducing beauty of detail, correct delineation, or,
indeed, rapidity of operation.” Alternative processes
were suggested but advantages over the processes de-
vised by Daguerre and Talbot were minimal. The direct
positive process on paper announced by the French-
man, Hippolyte Bayard, in 1839 received no support
in France and had no infl uence on the development of
photography. Abel Niépce de St-Victor’s albumen on
glass process of 1847 was a step into the future but,
again, was not widely infl uential. The typical photo-
graphs throughout the 1840s were the fi nely detailed
daguerreotype images on metal by the professional
portrait photographer and the coarser calotype images
on paper favoured by the amateur or where numerous
duplicates were required.
In the wider world, photography was born into an age
of change, uncertainty and social unrest, partly driven
by rapid technological innovation. During the 1840s,
there was economic depression in Europe and America.
There was famine and riot in Great Britain, revolution
in Paris and Vienna, and war with Mexico in the United
States. Yet the technology driving this change, was also
creating the seeds of recovery and prosperity. This was
the great age of the machine and steam power. Railways
were opening up countries and continents to new goods
and new cultures. Against this background photography
survived and thrived. Despite the problems, the pio-HISTORY: 3. PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE 1840s