Devil Doc
When Death smiles, Corpsmen smile back
It's the birthday of the man who helped invent the art of photography, Louis Daguerre, born just outside of Paris, France (1789). He studied to be an architect as a young man, but instead he went into theater set design. He was famous for the lifelike detail of his work, and he began to experiment with hand-painted translucent screens and elaborate lighting effects. He could use his screens and lights to create the illusion of a sunrise or a sudden storm onstage.
At the time, most painters were using a device called a camera obscura, which could cast a silhouette of an image onto a canvas for the artist to trace. But in the early 1800s, many scientists were looking for a way to capture the projected image forever. Daguerre wanted to do the same thing, and in 1829, he met an amateur inventor named Joseph Niépce, who had developed a light-sensitive pewter plate that could hold the image projected onto it. But the images took eight hours to develop, and the quality was extremely poor. Niépce died before he could improve the process.
Daguerre spent the next few years expanding on Niépce's experiments, and he eventually came up with a combination of copper plate coated with silver salts that could be developed in about 30 minutes with the application of mercury vapor and table salt. He then set out to take a series of pictures of Paris, capturing images of the Louvre and Notre Dame. The camera needed about 15 minutes of exposure time to capture an image, so most of Daguerre's early pictures don't show any people. The one exception is a picture of a boulevard that shows a man in the foreground who has stopped to shine his shoes. He was the first human being ever caught on film.
Daguerre announced his invention in 1839, and the images he produced became known as daguerreotypes. It wasn't photography as we know it today, because it only produced a single unique image, rather than multiple copies of the same image. But people were amazed at the level of detail it could reproduce.
Louis Daguerre said, "I have seized the light. I have arrested its flight."
Doc.
At the time, most painters were using a device called a camera obscura, which could cast a silhouette of an image onto a canvas for the artist to trace. But in the early 1800s, many scientists were looking for a way to capture the projected image forever. Daguerre wanted to do the same thing, and in 1829, he met an amateur inventor named Joseph Niépce, who had developed a light-sensitive pewter plate that could hold the image projected onto it. But the images took eight hours to develop, and the quality was extremely poor. Niépce died before he could improve the process.
Daguerre spent the next few years expanding on Niépce's experiments, and he eventually came up with a combination of copper plate coated with silver salts that could be developed in about 30 minutes with the application of mercury vapor and table salt. He then set out to take a series of pictures of Paris, capturing images of the Louvre and Notre Dame. The camera needed about 15 minutes of exposure time to capture an image, so most of Daguerre's early pictures don't show any people. The one exception is a picture of a boulevard that shows a man in the foreground who has stopped to shine his shoes. He was the first human being ever caught on film.
Daguerre announced his invention in 1839, and the images he produced became known as daguerreotypes. It wasn't photography as we know it today, because it only produced a single unique image, rather than multiple copies of the same image. But people were amazed at the level of detail it could reproduce.
Louis Daguerre said, "I have seized the light. I have arrested its flight."
Doc.
