Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre 1789-1851

Lived in France.

Known as one of the inventors of photography and for his stage designs that he named Diorama. These stage designs included changing light effects and paintings that were 22 by 14 meters of famous areas.  Daguerre was also well known for using a camera obscura to help with his paintings however, Daguerre wanted a way to stop the image that was projected by the obscura so he teamed up with Niepce in 1829. However, Niepce died 4 years later at the age of 69 leaving Daguerre to continue research and in 1835 Daguerre accidentally found a way to reduce the exposure time needed to capture a photograph;Originally a photograph would take about 8 hours of exposure time, (as seen by Niepce's photograph that shows that the sun moved across the whole sky during the exposure). According to legend, Daguerre put an exposed plate in a cupboard and after a few days discovered that the plate had developed. Daguerre concluded that the plate developed due to mercury that leaked onto the plate from a broken thermometer. This was an unbelievable discovery because it reduced the exposure time needed from 8 hours to about 30 mins.  However, Daguerre did not find a way to stop the plate from exposing until 1837 by a process he called Daguerreotype that later became known to the general public. Also, because photographs still took 30 mins to expose, there were no photographs of people until Daguerre captured a photo of a man that stopped to have his shoe shined (see photo below, man is near the bottom left of the photo).

Info from:

http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Biographies/MainBiographies/D/Daguerre/1.html

Photos from:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2062/2217858569_716a04ae47.jpg


http://www.iapp.de/krone/timeline/Bilder/daguerre.jpg