HF The History of Photography 600pág

The daguerreotype 71
to events, both spiritually and physically. After a long wait, a door opens in the
background and the first of the audience to come out rush into the vestibule. 'Silver
iodide' cries one. 'Quicksilver !' shouts another, while a third maintains that hyposulphite
of soda is the name of the secret substance. Everyone pricks his ears, but
nobody understands anything. Dense circles form round single speakers, and the
crowd surges forward in order to snatch bits of news here and there. At length our
group too manages to catch hold of the coat-tails of one of the lucky audience and
make him speak out. Thus the secret gradually unfolds itself, but for a long time
still, the excited crowd mills to and fro under the arcades of the Institute, and on
the Pont des Arts, before it can make up its mind to return to everyday things.
An hour later, all the opticians' shops were besieged, but could not rake together
enough instruments to satisfy the onrushing army of would-be daguerreotypists ;
a few days later you could see in all the squares of Paris three-legged dark-boxes
planted in front of churches and palaces. All the physicists, chemists, and learned
men of the capital were polishing silvered plates, and even the better-class grocers
found it impossible to deny themselves the pleasure of sacrificing some of their
means on the altar of progress, evaporating it in iodine and consuming it in
mercury vapour.
Soon there appeared a pamphlet in which Daguerre fully described his process,
and as, alas, my money was not sufficient to buy the apparatus, I bought the
brochure in order to be able at least to daguerreotype in imagination. I still see it
before me, its violet-grey covers decorated with a vignette of the Pantheon with Fig 4
the inscription 'Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante'. The publisher could
not help rubbing in the immortality of the inventor in this rather obvious way.12
One edition after another of Daguerre's manual, prepared by command of the
Government, was sold out ; twenty-nine editions, in six languages, were published
by the end of the year, not counting a number of brochures by other people.13
At the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers the inventor himself gave weekly demonstrations
of the process. After the silvered copper plate had been thoroughly cleaned
and polished, it was sensitized by vapour of iodine in an iodizing-box, forming a thin
layer of silver iodide on its surface. After exposure the latent image was developed by
vapour of mercury heated over a spirit-lamp, the mercury attaching itself to those
parts of the silver iodide which had been affected by light. The picture was then fixed
with hyposulphite of soda (before March 1839 this was done with common salt),
washed with distilled water, and gently dried over a flame as any water-drop adhering
to the surface would have left a mark. To protect the delicate deposit of mercury
from abrasion, the daguerreotype had to be framed behind glass, and the edges carefully
sealed to prevent oxidation of the silver.
Perhaps no other invention ever captured the imagination of the public to such
a degree and conquered the world with such lightning rapidity as the daguerreotype.
All Paris was seized with 'daguerreotypomania', so amusingly derided by Theodore Pl 29
Maurisset in December 1839. The caricature shows a crowd of people pushing into
the enterprising establishment of Susse Freres, attracted by an enormous advertisement
to buy daguerreotypes for New Year's gifts. Over the entrance large notices
proclaim that 'non-inverted pictures can be taken in 13 minutes without sunshine. '14
While one photographer is just aiming his camera up the skirts of a tightrope dancer
on the left, another tries to take the portrait of a child whose mother and nanny do
their best to keep his struggles in check. Baron Seguier, inventor of the portable
apparatus for travellers (see page 74) passes by, his boxes tucked under his arm. Their