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Description of  The Early American Daguerreotype: Cross-Currents in Art and Technology (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series)

0262034107 pdf The American daguerreotype as something completely new: a mechanical invention that produced an image, a hybrid of fine art and science and technology. The daguerreotype, invented in France, came to America in 1839. By 1851, this early photographic method had been improved by American daguerreotypists to such a degree that it was often referred to as the American process. The daguerreotypenow perhaps mostly associated with stiffly posed portraits of serious-visaged nineteenth-century personageswas an extremely detailed photographic image, produced though a complicated process involving a copper plate, light-sensitive chemicals, and mercury fumes. It was, as Sarah Kate Gillespie shows in this generously illustrated history, something wholly and remarkably new: a product of science and innovative technology that resulted in a visual object. It was a hybrid, with roots in both fine art and science, and it interacted in reciprocally formative ways with fine art, science, and technology. Read more