How rapidly a combination of inventiveness and business sense can lead to success can be seen in the collaboration of [Alexander] Wolcott and [John] Johnson, partners in a New York manufactory which produced and distributed optical instruments and other equipment involving precision engineering. After their initial successes in early October 1839, the two continued to work on improving their mirror camera. This not only had the advantage of repгoducing the view the right way round but also avoided the loss of light which occurred with the usual lenses. In addition, the concave mirror focused the light, so that far more light reached the plate. With the exposure time thus reduced, the making of portraits became a practical proposition, although the construction of the camera permitted only a small format of, at most, five square centimeters.
Early in March 1840 Wolcott, with Johnson as a partner, opened a portrait studio in New York, the first anywhere in the world. On March 15 they moved to other premises and installed a lighting system by which two mirrors reflected light from outside onto the subject. On May 8 Wolcott patented the camera, which was to have a major influence on the early spread of the daguerreotype in the United States and Britain. The idea of using a mirror instead of a lens, which tended to swallow up light had. in fact, first been put forward in Scotland in April 1839, but had not been followed up. The deficiencies of Daguerre's process were thus being addressed very early on, indicating a desire to make it suitable for use by a larger number of people as quickly as possible.
It frequently happened that identical or similar ideas cropped up in towns that were far apart, and were developed further without the inventors knowing of each other's work. This simultaneity shows that the invention of the daguerreotype was in line with the current state of scientific thinking and that its further development was determined by the requirements of its potential users whether behind or in front of the camera. Almost all the significant inventions relating to the daguerreotype between 1839 and 1841 were arrived at independently by several different people. Which one of them first became publicly known was often a matter of pure chance.
- Timm Starl, 'A New World of Pictures: The use and spread of the daguerreotype process', in Michel Friztot, A New History of Photography. Cologne, 1998, p.39
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