Hillotype Color Daguerreotype
date: label: Date made
content: ca 1850s-1860s
name: label: maker
content: Hill, Levi
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: The Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History holds an extraordinary series of early color photographs: sixty-two color daguerreotype plates made by Rev. Levi L. Hill in the early 1850s in Westkill, Greene County, New York. This is the world's largest collection of Heliochromy, a rare early color photographic process based on silver chloride.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Hill's color process was extremely complex, consisting of coating a daguerreotype plate with multiple layers of a compound of different metals that reacted to the different colors in the spectrum. The achievement of inventing a color photographic process in 1850 was even more remarkable considering that Hill was not trained as a scientist and lived in a very remote area of New York State.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Yet Hill was undisputably an important figure in the early history of American photography, an entrepreneur and an enthusiastic innovator. He wrote the first, and one of the best, manuals on daguerreotypy, "A Treatise on Daguerreotype" in 1850; and in 1856 he wrote the first manual on color photography, "Treatise on Heliochromy", which includes a description of his experiments and an overview of all the means of chemically producing pictures in natural colors with light.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Among pieces of importance by Hill are many daguerreotype photographs of illustrations such as this image of the leaves of a plant.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: Place Made
content: United States: New York, West Kill
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
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content: Photography
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content: Hillotypes
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. John B. Garrison
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PG.003999.60
label: accession number
content: 125759
label: catalog number
content: 3999.60
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Photograph
label: Object Name
content: Hillotype
label: Object Name
content: photograph
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: copper plate (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: photographic emulsion (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: chemicals (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 1/2 in x 6 1/2 in; 21.59 cm x 16.51 cm