The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1911-06-02
Professor William DT4oer


f Morse, there was taken in 1889
the first photograph of the human
face. The photograph was that OF
Miss Dorothy Catherine Draper, and
the man who took it was her brother,
Dr. John William Draper, professor
of chemistry in the university. He
had gone a step beyond Daguerre and
by this photograph he established him
self as one of the great inventors OF
the nineteenth century.
Not long ago occurred the hundredth
anniversary of Doctor Draper's birth
and it was celebrated in the auditori-
um of the university at Aqueduct ave-
nue. and One Hundred and Eighty-first
street.
1t was on the roof of the old build
ing on Washington place that there
was set up, in 1910, the first photo
graph gallery in the world. To this gal
lery there came to be amazed and de-
lighted all the notables of the day, in
cluding Theodore Frelinghuysen, the
candidate for vice-president on the
Henry Clay ticket.
Professor Draper took the pictures.
His camera was a cigar box and his
lense the glass from a pair Of spec
tacles. Doctor Draper's assistant in
this gallery, the man who posed the
sitters and attended to the artistic de-
tails, was Prof S. F. B. Morse, who
only five years before and in the same
building had operated the first tele-
graph line.
The pictures taken in this gallery
were developed by Professor Draper,
for it was his experiments in regard
to the chemical action of light that
had enabled him to improve the proc
ess of Daguerre almost as soon as the
latter's discovery was made known.
1t was in 1889 that Daguerre gave his
process to the world, but 1t was not
then adaptable to landscapes or por-
traits. In the same year Professor
Draper announced that he had found
the way to photograph the human face
and to overcome those obstacles which
made the Frenchman's process imper-
feet and impractical.
In these kodak days the directions
which Doctor Draper gave at this time
for taking a photograph are interest
ing. At first, he said, he had tried
dusting the face Of sister with white
powder, but he later found that this
was unnecessary. On a bright day
and with a sensitive plate, he an
nounced, portraits could be obtained
in the course of five or seven minutes.
THE hands of the SITTER he said
in these directions to the camera
fiends of that day, should never rest
upon the chest, for the motion OF res
piration disturbs them so much as to
make them of thick and clumsy ap-
pearance, destroying also the repre-
sentation of the veins on the back,
which, If they are held motionless, are
copied with surprising beauty.
"A person dressed in black coat
and open waistcoat Of the same color
must put on a temporary front of
drab or flesh color or by the time that
his face and the fine shadows of his
wooden clothing are evolved his shirt
will be solarized and will be blue and
black with white halo around it.
Owing to the circumstances that
yellow and yellowish browns require
a long time to impress the substance
of the daguerrotype, persons whose
faces are freckled all over give rise to
the most 1udicrous results, a white
portrait mottled with just as many
black dots as the sitter has yellow
ones
On March %, 1910, Doctor Draper
took from the roof of the building the
first photograph ever taken of the
moon. His plate was exposed 20 min
utes and the image was about an inch
in diameter. The photograph was pre-
sented to what was then the Lyceum
of Natural History. 1t created a great
sensation at the time, not only here
but abroad. Daguerre's name was