A recently copied article from 1839 on the birth of photography

The Daguerrotipe (sic)

The following is an extract from a private letter of professor S. F. B. Morse to the editor of the Observer, dated Paris, March 9th.

“You have perhaps heard of the Daguerrotipe, so called from the discoverer, M. Daguerro. It is one of the most beautiful discoveries of the age. I don’t know if you recollect some experiments of min in New Haven, many years ago, when I had my painting room next to professor Silliman’s, experiments to ascertain if it were possible to fix the image of the Camera Obscura. I was able to produce different degrees of shade on paper, dipped into a solution of nitrate of silver, by means of different degrees of light; but finding that light produced dark, and dark light, I presumed the production of a true image to be impracticable, and gave up the attempt. M. Daguerro has realised in the most exquisite manner this idea.

“A few days ago I addressed a note to M. D. requesting, as a stranger, the favor to see his results and inviting him in turn to see my telegraph. I was politely invited to see them under these circumstances, for he had determined not to show them again, until the cambers had passed definitely on a proposition for the government to purchase the secret of the discovery, and make it public. The day before yesterday, the 7th, I called on M. Daguerro, at his rooms in the diorama, to see these admirable results.
“They are produced on a mutalic [sic] surface, the principal pieces about 7 inches by 5, and they resemble aquatint engravings, for they are in simple chiaro oscuro [sic] and not in colors. But the exquisite minuteness of the delineation cannot be conceived. No painting or engraving ever approached it. For example: In a view up the street, a distant sign would be perceived and the eye could just discern that there were lines of letters upon it, but so minute as not to be read with the naked eye. By the assistance of a powerful lens, which magnified fifty times, applied to the delineation, every letter was clearly and distinctly legible, and so also were the minutest breaks and lines in the walls of the buildings, and the pavements of the streets. The effect of the lens upon the picture was in a great degree like that of the telescope in nature.

“Objects moving are not impressed. The Boulevard, so constantly filled with a moving throng of pedestrians and carriages, was perfectly solitary, except an individual who was having his boots brushed. His feet were compelled, of course, to be stationary for some time, one being on the box of the boot-black, and the other on the ground, consequently his boots and legs are well defined, but he is without body or head, because these were in motion.

“The impressions of interior views are Brembradnant [sic] perfected. One of Mr. D.’s plates is an impression of a spider. The spider was not bigger than the head of a large pin, but the image, magnified by the solar microscope to the size of the palm of the hand, having been impressed on the plate and examined through a lens, was further magnified, and showed a minuteness of organization hitherto not seen to exist. You perceive how this discovery is, therefore, about to open a new field of research in the depths of microscope nature. We are soon to see if the minute has discoverable limits. The naturalist is to have a new kingdom to explore, as much beyond the microscope as the microscope is beyond the naked eye.”

From Niles’ National Register, Baltimore, 27 April, 1839. No. 9, Vol. 6. Edited by William Ogden Niles.