The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1909-12-31

sun, and this film, instead of doing
harm, is a protection. 1t can be re-
moved by a chemical process, leaving
the picture as clear and beautiful as
when first taken.
We call these early photogra phs
daguerreotypes after the man who in
vented them-a Frenchman named
Daguerre-and the story of how he
learned to make them reads quite
like a fairy tale, as a great many
things in real life do. At the time he
lived-the early part of the nine
teenth century-a great many people
we're trying to find some way to pre-
serve the pictures that the light
painted. They had known about
these pictures for long time-for
hundreds of years, in fact, and per-
haps longer-and had also learned
how to produce them whenever they
liked. Away back in the sixteenth
century all Italian named Battista
Porta had constructed a camera OBJ
scura, or, as we would say in Eng
lish, a dark chamber" and all Ma
pies had fiocked to his house to see
the beautiful pictures painted by the
light" This camera was a very sim
pie affair, simply, as the name tells
us, a dark chamber. Battista Porta
darkened the window of a room So
that no light could enter except
through a hole about big enough to
let the little finger through, and the
light entering through this hole
threw a picture of the scenery out
side, upside down, upon the wall op-
posite. After a while people learned
that by putting a, lens in front of the
hole they could make the picture
clearer, and, they also learned to
throw the picture, by means of a mir
ror, on a table instead of on the wall.
Then they didn't have to look at it
upside down. 1t was all very inter-
esting and amusing, and the camera
became favorite toy. Rich persons
used to use it to amuse their guests,
just as we use gramophones to-day.
Artists used it, too, to help them in
their sketching, but still no one knew
how to preserve the fairy pictures.
At the beginning of the nineteenth
century a great many people were
trying to do this. The famous Sir
Humphrey Davy and Wedgewood, of
the Wedgwood potteries, worked over
the problem together, but the pic
lures they produced soon faded. Da-
guerre worked over it till his wife
hn oh hn iToo mo n
young Frenchman whose name we
will never know let the secret Gle
after he had discovered it. We would
never have known anything about
him if he had not gone into the shop
of an optician in Paris to buy a cam
era. He was very pale and evidently
very poor, and could not afford to
buy the camera, after all. But he
showed the astonished optician pho
tographic view of Paris and promised
TO come back again. He never came
and was never heard of again. The
secret that brought fame and fortune
to Daguerre brought nothing to him,
and did not even save him, perhaps,
from dying of want.
At this very time Daguerre and an
other Frenchman, named Niepce
(Nee-eps), were trying to hold the
light pictures captive, and not sue
ceeding very we'll. They formed Il
partnership after a while, but Niepce
died before they had produced any,
thing better than a silhouette, which
required six or eight hours exposure.
Daguerre still went on experimenting.
One day, five years later, he put what
he supposed was a spoiled plate in
his cupboard. 1t had not been en-
posed long enough to produce a pic
ture, but when he took it out in the
morning he found on it a beautiful
photograph. We can easily imagine
his excitement and amazement. He
tried the experiment again, exposing
a plate for a short time and putting
it in the cupboard. Again a perfect
picture. His joy was unbounded. Il
have seized the light" he exclaimed.
Il have arrested his flight The sun
in future will draw my pictures. L.
only remained for him to discover
the secret of the cupboard. 1t was
found in a saucer of mercury, the
vapor having brought out the picture
which human eyes could not see.
At the time Daguerre was making
his experiments, an Englishman
named Talbot was also trying to seize
the light, and his discovery was an
nounced only a few weeks after Da-
queries. He made pictures which
were called talbotypes, but people
liked the daguerreotypes best and
used to pay from SIS to $50 for one
of them.
This is the story of the daguerreo-
type, and those of us who know it
will always think, when we look at
those quaint old pictures of our an
cestors, not only of Daguerre and his
saucer of mercury, but of the young
Frenchman, whose name we do net
know, who "seized the light" also,
but seized it in vain.-New York
Tribune