Digital BW, The Print

January 1839 Daguerreotype Announced in Paris 

One hundred seventy-five years ago, in January 1839, members of the Academy of Sciences in Paris were shown a unique photographic process that literally changed the world as we see it. The inventor, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, called his discovery the "daguerreotype." It was the first commercially successful form of photography. 

Later that year, a British inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot, announced his calotype process, making 1839 the year photography was popularized. Some controversies regarding who was first ensued. Daguerre did not claim a patent in France but gave the French government the rights to the process as a gift "free to the world," although an agent later filed a patent in England on Daguerre's behalf. As can be imagined, the early history of photography was rife with similar designs, claims to fame and compensation, and many other related intrigues that go hand-in-hand with an invention of such universal significance. 

Bill Lewis