DAGUERRE, LOUIS JACQUES 3IANDE, was born in 1789 at Cormeille in the department of Seine-et.-Oiae, France. At the outset of life he obtained a situation in a government office, but he early quitted that employment, and became a pupil of M. Degoti, scene painter at the opera. As a scene-painter, Daguerre in a few years surpassed his instructor, and placed himself on a level with the first professors of that art in Paris, while he quickly extended the capa bilities of the various ingenious contrivances, which he invented for producing increased pictorial effect. Ho also assisted 31. Pravost in the preparation of his panoramic views of the great cities of the world. The experience lie thus acquired suggested to M. Daguerre the idea of producing a kind of scenic exhibition, in which the illu sion should be more perfect than in the panorama, and ha invented, in conjunction with Bouton, a method of so throwing coloured lights and shadows upon the view, as to produce the appearance of change of season, day and night, storm and sunshine, &es This they termed a diorama, and when exhibited, July 1822, in a circular structure erected for the purpose in Paris, the success' was complete. The diorama in fact, made what the Parisians term a sensation, and no long time elapsed before Messrs. Bouton and Dagucrre erected a similar building in London, to which each picture was removed, when it had been exhibited for its season in Paris. For some seventeen years picture followed picture, each rivalling its predecessor, but in 1339 a tire destroyed the building, and the view then exhibiting in it. Daguerre's loss was very great, and the building was not re-erected, as the public interest in dioramas, which had now lost their novelty was beginning to flag.
Daguerre had before this been directing his attention to a matte: which was destined to secure for him a more permanent reps:statics than his scenery or his dioramas. This was the mechanical production of facsimile delineations of objects by the chemical action of light As early as about the middle of the 16th century, Fabricius had dis covered the property which salts of silver possess of changing colon: when exposed to the action of light, and this property had been thr subject of many experiments by scientific men. Sir Humphry Dav3 among recent chemists had sought by various applications of fish property to obtain copies of simple objects, but though he succeeded in doing this, he was unable to prevent them from being effaced when exposed to the light. In France M. Niepce began about 1814 tc pursue a similar course of experiments, and he succeeded in rendering the images he obtained insensible to the subsequent action of the light ; but his discovery remained very incomplete when Daguerre commenced similar experiments. About 1829 Niepce and Daguerre joined in the prosecution of their investigations. Niepce died in 1833, before they had made any decided approach to success. But Daguerre persevered, and at length his zeal and rare ingenuity met with an ample reward. He discovered in fact a method by which be was able so to prepare metallic plates, that by placing them in the darkened chamber of a camera-obscura, they received a distinct impression of the images thrown upon them by the lens of the camera, which he was enabled by a subsequent process to render indelible. It does not
belong to this section of our work to state the steps by which he arrived at this grand discovery, or the method he finally adopted for producing, rendering visible, and fixing this sun-picture. It will be enough to say that with remarkable patience and ingenuity he sur mounted every difficulty, and eventually produced his discovery, as to its principles, perfect. Other experimentalists bad in this country and elsewhere been at work, unknown to Daguerre, at the same idea, but to M. Daguerre is duo the priority of publication of the discovery, and no doubt also the priority of discovery, as far as the producing sun-pictures upon metallic plates is concerned. What has proved to be the more generally applicable process of photography, was as unquestionably the result of the independent investigations of our own countryman, Mr. Talbot; but, as was to be expected, both the processes as now practised are very different to what they were when orisinally promulgated by their inventors or discoverers.
Great was the excitement among both learned and unlearned when in Jauuary 1839 M. Arago gave, at a sitting of the Acad6mie des Sciences, an account of the new method by whicji, as was said, the sun himself became the artist, and some of the delineations, with all their wonderful delicacy of detail, were exhibited. At the same time Daguerre made a public exhibition of numerous pictures produced by what he termed the '316thode Niepco perfectionn6e.' An examination of the merits of the new method was, at the suggestion of M. Arago, promptly ordered by the French government to be made, and in con sequence of the favourable nature of the report, M. Daguerre was in June 1839 nominated an Officer of the Legion of Honour ; and the project of a law was on the same day presented to the Chambers—by whom It was readily adopted—which accorded to M. Daguerre, an con dition of the fell publication of his method, an annuity for life of 6000 francs, and one of 4000 francs to the representative of M. Niepco. (Nuns.] The rapid extension and improvement of the process of Daguerre (or the Daguerreotype, as it soon came to be generally called) after its being thus freely made public property, was due perhaps more to others than to M. Daguerre, who however never ceased to labour at its improvement during the remainder of his life. He died July 12th, 1851, at Petit-Brie-sur-Marne, where a hand some monument has been erected by subscription to his memory.
M. Daguerre is the author of two short works—' Histoire et Descrip tion des proc6des do Daguerreotype, et du Diorama,' 8vo, Paris, 1839; and Nouveau Moyen de pr6parer la couche sensible des plaques destindes h recevoir lea images phatographlques,' 8vo, Paris, 1844.
(Arago, Rapport d l'Acadentie des Sciences ; A. do Lacaze, art. Dagaerre in Nouv. Biog. Gen.; and the various historical notices of the Daguerreotype and Photography.)