Cameras That Made History (The Trailblazers)

One of America's first daguerreotypists, Jacob Byerly ,peers into the viewing screen of his camera, a plain box with a lens hardly changed from the centuries-old camera obscura. The group portrait at right, taken with a camera much like Byerly's, shows the lifelike detail characteristic of daguerreotypes. The smallest child, unable to hold still, appears blurred; the other figures are sharp, although no one appears to be enjoying the ordeal.

Portraits of Mrs. Kiah Sewall and Family, 1840

The daguerreotypes that introduced photography to the world in 1839 were amazingly sharp and detailed pictures despite the fact that they had been made in a crude camera. Daguerre had simply modified a portable camera ob­scura, the device artists had long used as a sketching aid, so that it would accept a light-sensitive plate.

While Daguerre's invention was ac­claimed as miraculous, its limitations soon became obvious. The combina­tion of poor lenses and slow-acting chemicals required exposures of up to 20 minutes in bright sunlight before an image could be recorded in the cam­era. Scoffers predicted that photogra­phy would never get beyond the novelty stage. But in scarcely more than a year they were being proved wrong. Thanks to improvements in light-sensitive com­pounds and a few optical innovations, exposures could be made in less than two minutes. Customers were soon flocking to newly established daguerreotype studios-on the conti­nent, in Britain and, before long, in the United States-where, with the aid of headrests and arm supports, they tried to hold still for the camera. 

The Wolcott camera (top), proudly emblazoned with the name of its inventor, American optical designer Alexander S. Wolcott, cut exposure time to about 90 seconds in sunlight by gathering light with a large concave mirror, which produced a brighter image than any available lens. Light entered the camera through a large hole (a) and struck the highly polished mirror (b), which concentrated the rays and reflected them onto a viewing screen (c) held in a frame by a clip (d): To focus, the photographer looked through a door (e) and moved the frame's support (f) to sharpen the image. He then substituted a plate for the screen. 

A front view of Alexander S. Wolcott's mirror camera (top), patented in 1840, shows the circular light-admitting hole, the rectangular plate holder and the curved reflecting mirror behind it. Typical of the tiny pictures this type of camera took is the one above, now badly deteriorated, of Henry Fitz, a telescope maker who helped Wolcott build a larger camera of similar design. Although Wolcott's mirror instruments made serviceable pictures, they soon became obsolete as lens design improved.