When the Parisian theatre and art critic Jules Janin was one of the first lucky few in January 1839 to see Daguerre’s earliest productions, he characterised these daguerreotypes as Magic mirrors: “Dans ce miroir magique, la nature se refl�cte dans toute sa v�rit� na�ve et un peu triste.” [1]
Although the announcement to the world concerning the invention of the Daguerreotype was made in Paris at the beginning of January 1839, the method used to produce Daguerre’s “ing�nieux miroir” remained secret. By the time the Chamber of Deputies voted in July to grant a pension to Daguerre, seven months had passed. His secret was officially released at a special joint meeting of the Acad�mie des Sciences� and� Acad�mie des Beaux–Arts held at the Institut de France in Paris on August 19, 1839. It took the form of a straight lecture given on behalf of Daguerre by François Arago, without any practical demonstration. Information on the technique and chemicals used appeared therefore in the newspapers in Paris the following day, reaching London on August 23. Because of� the importance of the design and use of processing boxes for pre–treatment of a silvered plate with iodine vapour and for using mercury vapour after exposure, the information revealed in Arago’s lecture was only barely sufficient to practise the technique. A manual on the technique containing diagrams of the apparatus was being prepared for publication, but although some historians have earlier thought that the Manual was released by the third week of August there is now substantial evidence that the first Manual in French did not appear in Paris until September 7, 1839. [2] An English translation was produced in London extremely quickly. The preface of this translation by J. S. Memes was dated September 13 – a Friday –, and was advertised that day in the evening edition of the London Globe with a comment that “This work was published in Paris on Saturday” again confirming that the first French edition did not appear before Saturday September 7, the day that Daguerre gave the first of three practical demonstrations before the public at the Palais d’Orsay in Paris.
Advertisement for Daguerreotype Manual, Camera and accessories sold by Susse Fr�res in Paris: La Quotidienne, Septembre 5, 1839, p. 4.
Giroux et Cie’s first advertisement for the Daguerreotype Manual and their Daguerreotype camera and equipment “under the direction of M. Daguerre” published in Paris in Le Constitutionnel, Septembre 7, 1839, p. 4
From the dates given above of the first events in Paris it can be judged that it was no mean achievement for a Frenchman called Ste Croix to be competent enough with the technique to begin demonstrations to the public in London on Friday September 13, 1839. His identity has remained a complete mystery in England and in France. Recent re–examination of the subject has not been able to unveil the personality of Ste Croix, a name which not inconceivably could have been adopted to hide his true identity, but some new facts have been established about his demonstrations of daguerreotype apparatus and technique in England during that September and October.[3] Until recently it has been quite simple to assume that Ste Croix must have disappeared from history by returning to France directly from London. Yet it has recently been found that Ste Croix did infact go in the opposite direction. For six days at the end of October 1839 he was in Birmingham [4] demonstrating the technique. He may then have done the same in Liverpool after he left Birmingham late on October 29 to keep an appointment in that city port.
Comparison of the time scale of the arrival of the daguerreotype into England with the first use of the technique in other countries outside France, such as the closer Germany or the more distant USA or Australia, is an obvious requirement of a study of a figure such as Ste Croix. But, in the event, Ste Croix’s visit to England presents a significant resemblance to the journey across the Atlantic of the daguerreotype from France to America. Where else to start exploring that resemblance but with Robert Taft’s Photography and the American Scene[5], and Beaumont Newhall’s� The Daguerreotype in America[6] ? However, inspite of the work done by those two historians, a clear view of those events is difficult to establish, for there are several uncertainties and confusions in the earliest history of the daguerreotype in New York in the fall of 1839. Two figures are the most relevant:� D. W. Seager and François Gouraud.
Seager, said to be an Englishman resident in New York, was a first amateur who made and exhibited the first daguerreotype that side of the Atlantic not later than the last week of� September 1839. [7] If it is presumed that Ste Croix had left Paris for London as an amateur without any relationship with Daguerre or any of his associates, then Seager would be an interesting comparison, because he had apparently returned to New York from Europe by mid–September 1839. The relevance of Seager to this article centres around the unsolved dating of an alleged transatlantic journey by him. That dating would also provide the key to establishment of the true facts about his earliest production of a daguerreotype in New York which has been put as early as September 16 (to this writer unlikely) rather than a more reasonable September 26, 1839. Seager is therefore discussed briefly at the end of this essay. For the most significant figure having a closer analogue to Ste Croix is François Gouraud.
�François� Gouraud (also sometimes known as Fauvel–Gouraud) has been conveniently characterised by Beaumont Newhall as ‘Daguerre’s Agent in America’ [6], although more specifically he was acting for Alphonse Giroux in introducing daguerreotypes and processing equipment to America. Beaumont Newhall [8] believed that Gouraud reached New York on Saturday 23 November 1839, and indeed the important contemporary newspaper source that he quotes is quite clear: New York Observer, Saturday, November 30, 1839: “M.Gourraud ... arrived on Saturday in the British Queen ...”. The reporter had been shown by Gouraud a large number of pictures “just arrived from Paris ”. A few days later on December 4, at a hotel on Broadway, Gouraud first� exhibited to the public these daguerreotypes from Paris “taken by Daguerre” or “his most talented pupils” as well as a few already taken by� himself in New York. In the following weeks Gouraud gave “private or public instructions of the process” and sold Giroux’s apparatus. Beaumont Newhall says The British Queen, on which Gouraud crossed the Atlantic, left on 1 November from Liverpool. If true, it would� thus be not impossible that Gouraud was the same man as Ste Croix! For late on Tuesday, 29 October, Ste Croix had left Birmingham because he was “expected to arrive in Liverpool” that night. [4] Such a common identity would infact make a great deal of sense in explaining Ste Croix’s activities in England and of Gouraud’s in America. HOWEVER, Beaumont Newhall was wrong about the place of departure of the ship. No one could have caught The British Queen from Liverpool on November lst, because a simple examination of contemporary newspaper advertisements shows that this ship did, in� fact, leave for America from London on November lst and from Portsmouth on November 3rd, reaching New York on November 23.
Before we examine the problems posed in establishing the route and timetable when Gouraud crossed the Atlantic let us consider first why it might possible to raise a hypothesis that Gouraud in America and Ste Croix in England in September and October 1839 could conceivably have been the same man.
�On June 22, 1839, Daguerre signed a Contract [9] giving Alphonse Giroux� rights to manufacture and sell Daguerreotype equipment and Cameras bearing a seal that it was personally approved by Daguerre.� Half of the profits would be Giroux’s, the other half going to Daguerre and Niepce. Daguerre was at that time planning to uniquely sell rights for the use the Daguerreotype in England.� So, in his Contract with Giroux, Daguerre’s undertaking was not to deliver such apparatus abroad, with the exception of England.
A patent was obtained in England by Miles Berry, a patent agent.� Ste Croix went to England in the second week of September 1839 and certainly to the end of October was demonstrating to the public the technique of taking daguerreotype pictures. Was he just a private entrepeneur unaware of the true situation or was he an agent acting for Daguerre or Giroux? The three–way legal and moral situation regarding the sale of apparatus in England relating to Giroux, Daguerre, and Miles Berry is complex, so if Ste Croix was an agent to sell apparatus or was carrying out a surreptious publicity campaign in England then it would be difficult to decide if he was acting for Daguerre or Giroux. In complete contrast the situation in the rest of the world was straightforward. Outside of England there was no patent, and Giroux’s contract clearly enabled him, instead of Daguerre, to sell daguerreotype apparatus in America.
If Beaumont Newhall’s account of the Gouraud’s journey to New York was correct then it would not be inconceivable that he could have spent almost eight weeks in England before crossing the Atlantic. But if we look at Robert Taft’s earlier account of Gouraud in New York then it will be seen that it would be impossible to raise such an hypothesis: for Taft says that Gouraud arrived in New York in September!
Just as Ste Croix’s first demonstration in London on September 13, 1839, was to invited guests and the press, so was Gouraud’s. No invitation issued by Ste.Croix has survived, but Taft was able to quote in full an invitation issued on November 29 by Gouraud:
As the friend and pupil of Mr. Daguerre, I came from Paris by the British Queen, with the charge of introducing to the New World the perfect knowledge of the marvelous process ... Having the good fortune to possess a collection of the finest proofs which have yet been made, either by the most talented pupils of Mr. Daguerre, or by that great artist himself, I have thought it my duty, before showing them to the public,to give the most eminent men and distinguished artists of this City the satisfaction of having the first view ... on Wednesday next, the 4th of December ... |
Taft was also able to quote from the diary of Philip Hone who saw the daguerreotypes on December 4. It would seem that on this occasion only the daguerreotypes themselves were displayed without Gouraud demonstrating the apparatus or actually taking a view.� The date of this preview is indisputable.� Not so regarding Gouraud’s arrival. The British Queen had arrived at New York on November 23, and it would be a natural supposition that Gouraud landed then.� However in a important note, obviously added at a late stage of publication, Taft says� that Giroux’s agent had arrived in New York on a previous voyage: “Gouraud’s name appears in the passenger list of Sept.21...evidently Gouraud’s exhibit did not arrive with him, for the exhibit was not displayed until early December”. [10] Taft believed the British Queen was of “considerable importance” in bring the earliest information about the daguerreotype to America ,the arrival of this ship at New York in mid–September 1839 being momentous. [11] Taft’s research and writing on these subjects is usually most excellent, so it is infortunate that his note just quoted left the situation uncertain because no specific details were given for the source of his “passenger list of Sept. 21”. Earlier in his book with regard to the British Queen, Taft had cited the “Morning Courier and New York Enquirer of September 21, 1839”, but no copy of that possible source has been available to the present researcher. Without doubt, substantial clarification of the first few months of the daguerreotype in New York required a successful search for passenger lists of the British Queen.
Two major histories of photography in America have produced conflicting evidence regarding Gouraud’s arrival in New York.� For this and other reasons, a general clarification of the arrival of the daguerreotype to America from France would be obtained from any definitive lists of passengers arriving in New York in 1839 on the luxury transatlantic steamer The British Queen. Passenger Lists of this ship on departure from London and Portsmouth (it did not leave from Liverpool as unaccountably stated by Beaumont Newhall) have not survived [12], but original ‘Passenger Arrival Records’ of the Bureau of Customs for the port of New York have certainly been preserved, including lists of the British Queen on arrival at New York in September and November 1839. [13]
Announcing the second voyage of The British Queen in The Times (London),
12 August 1839. Adjacent advertisements of other ship departures from
London to New York in the same issue of The Times are also available [here].
The British Queen had only just been built, pioneering the use of steam power to cross the Atlantic. Described in the London Times, 15 July 1839, her first voyage [14]� left London on 10 July 1839 and Portsmouth (12 July 1839) with 144 passengers reaching New York 27 July 1839.� The first return trip was 1 to 15 August. The British Queen’s second voyage [15]� departed from London on 1 September and Portsmouth 3 September 1839, arriving in New York with 196 passengers [16]� on 20 September 1839. Return journey was from New York 1 October, arriving with seventy–three passengers at Portsmouth 15 October and then to London. The third voyage[17]� departed from London on 1 November, Portsmouth� 3 November, with 163 passengers [18] arriving New York (Sandy Hook) at 18.00 hours on 23 November 1839 (with the return journey to London lasting from 2 to 25 December) .
French passengers from Le Havre joined the British Queen at Portsmouth. On the second voyage about 20 passengers from Le Havre [19] (probably leaving there on The Grand Turk of Calpe at 6.00pm on Sunday, 1 September [20] ) joined the ship at Portsmouth on 3 September to go to New York. Amongst them were two Frenchmen – they may have been companions as their baggage was treated together by the customs – who were listed [21] as:
| F. Guardard [sic] | Male age 48 | Merchant | France | ||
| 5packages | |||||
| E. Lahurs LeCompte | Male age 30 | Gent | France |
 |
Inspite of the uncertain spelling [“Guardard”? or “Guddard”?, see larger image of the manuscript], this entry in the list of passengers does show that François Gouraud was in New York on 21 September 1839. The words mentioned earlier of Robert Taft written in 1938 [22] are apt here and are entirely correct:
| This is the third time that the British Queen has been� mentioned in our text, all references being to the same arrival, as Gouraud’s name appears in the passenger list of Sept. 21 1839. The British Queen is of considerable importance in connection with the history of American photography! Evidently Gouraud’s exhibit did not arrive with him, for the exhibit was not displayed until early December. |
As we have already seen, the exhibition of the daguerreotypes from France, as well as a few taken, it seems, by himself in New York, was first held on 4 December. Beaumont Newhall in his The Daguerreotype in America quoted a seemingly dependable report from the New York Observer of Saturday November 30, about the reporter’s look at daguerreotypes “just arrived from Paris”. Unfortunately the report then continued with a problematic statement about Gouraud himself that can now be seen to be mistaken : “The collection is in the hands of M. Gourraud, a gentleman of taste, who arrived on Saturday in the British Queen”. The name of Gouraud is not on the passenger list of the third voyage of the British Queen that arrived at New York on 23 November 1839.
It is in line of consequence of that mistake that required this present article to be written. It would have only been possible to raise an hypothesis that Ste Croix in England in September and October 1839 might conceivably have been the same man as Gouraud, because of an assumption that the latter had not left Europe until 1 November: but such an hypothesis would now be untenable. By the time of his exhibition of daguerreotypes at 57 Broadway, New York on 4 December Gouraud had been that side of the Atlantic for ten weeks.� He seems to have taken a few daguerreotypes during that period but what else was he doing and where ? Could he already during October have been to Havana as originally intended, coming back to New York at end of November ?� Neither the instruction manual nor Daguerreotype equipment had become available for sale to the public in Paris until the first week of September 1839.[23] So it is unlikely Gouraud could have left Paris in the last week of August with more than one sample of the equipment produced by Giroux. Soon after he arrived in New York, he must at the end of September have written back to Paris to establish his position as agent in America as appears from a notice in the Parisian Journal des D�bats [24]:
Giroux et Cie’s advertisement concerning François Gouraud, their Daguerreotype agent in New York: Journal des D�bats� (Paris), 10 Novembre, 1839, p.4.
|
MM. Alphonse Giroux et Cie of Paris wishing the artists and amateurs of the two Americas to enjoy the same advantages that are offered in France by the new discovery of M. Daguerre, to protect them against the frauds of unscrupulous competition prejudical to the process, have considered it appropriate to establish a central depot for their apparatus (signed by the inventor and bearing their seal), at NEW YORK, Broadway, c/o� M. François GOURAUD, in which complete confidence can be placed as representative of this firm, for everything regarding the daguerreotype. |
No known daguerreotypists or pioneer photographers can be found amongst the 163 passengers listed on the third voyage of the British Queen that arrived in New York in late November 1839.� Robert Taft [25]� has described how two doctors from Kentucky were returning from London at the moment when details of Daguerre’s process were starting to come through, and who used the technique in Kentucky several months later.� It is therefore worth confirming their presence on the same second voyage of the British Queen on which Gouraud came to New York in September 1839:
| Robert Peter | Male age 34 | Gentmn | US | 4 packages. |
| James Bush | Male age 30 | Gentmn | US | 1 chest. |
It is remarkable that D. W. Seager took a daguerreotype scene of New York before the end of September 1839, most likely on September 26. The city’s Morning Herald of September 30� reported:
We saw, the other day, in Chilton’s in Broadway, a very curious specimen of the new mode, recently invented by Daguerre in Paris of taking on copper the exact resemblance of scenes and living objects, through the medium of the sun’s ray’s reflected in a camera obscura.� The scene embraces a part of St. Paul’s church, and the surrounding shrubbery and houses...It seems that for an annuity of $1200 a year, paid by the� French Government, the inventor, in Paris, agreed to make public the process of taking such miniature pictures. Mr. Segur, of this city, on this description, set to work his powers, and, about three days ago, succeeded in making the experiment ... |
The words “about three days ago” in this report are significant in providing the day the first daguerreotype was taken on the American side of the Atlantic. Almost immediately it was displayed at J. W. Chilton’s pharmacy at 263 Broadway. Obviously not lacking in confidence, Seager gave a demonstration lecture on the process on October 5. [26] However, the dating of his first trial of Daguerre’s technique is not entirely straighforward for the George Eastman House collection holds a letter from Seager to the American Institute dated November 7,1839, in which he makes an incredible claim: “my first result was on the 16th Septr last”.[27] Maybe when Seager wrote the 16th it could have been a simple mistake for 26th, for it seems to the present writer an unlikely, and indeed almost impossible, early date.� There needs to be much stronger evidence, and better reason, to demonstrate that the Morning Herald time scale could be wrong.� Both pieces of evidence have to be borne in mind, and any historical writing will have to record the conflict of possibilities, but the Morning Herald report does (as will be seen) fit in entirely with other considerations.
The situation regarding Seager is indeed confused more by a reminiscence of A. Prosch published in 1882 saying Seager had been on a visit to Europe and himself brought to New York “a complete description” of the process:� “On leaving the London dock a friend of his having just received from Paris one of the French pamphlets giving a complete description of the process of making pictures known as daguerreotypes threw the pamphlet from the dock to the ship”. [28]�� A glance back to the introduction of this essay will show that the dates outlined for the release of information about the daguerreotype technique in Paris and the earliest publication of the Manual make it obvious that only a published account of Arago’s lecture of 19 August could have reached New York by mid–September on any ship, for it took almost three weeks at best to cross the Atlantic.� If Prosch’s story has any substance, Seager can only have gone back to New York with the limited information about Daguerre’s secret made available in Paris on 19 August. The supposition must be that he would have to travel either on the second voyage of the British Queen or on some other ship [29] leaving during the last week of August.� His name is not listed amongst the passengers on the British Queen who left London on 1 September, nor – according to F. and M. Rinhart – on the Great Western[30]� from Bristol on 24 August 1839.� Maybe it is not surprising that he was not on either of these two pioneering steam ships, for it would at least accord with part of Prosch’s story that Seager’s return had been in “one of our London packets just prior to the successful establishment of steam navigation”. But in a search of a range of published passenger lists of that period F. and M. Rinehart did not find indexed any D. W. Seager, only a suspiciously similar name of A. or T. Segers, merchant and US citizen, passenger on the steamship Great Western on which Samuel Morse returned from Europe that April ! If Seager had indeed been in Paris and seen Daguerre’s specimens earlier in 1839 then it would have given him an advantage over other Americans when first trying out the technique.� It should also be not forgotten that Seager and others in America could also have obtained some experience of photography in 1839 by experimenting with paper techniques before the release of Daguerre’s secret. For there is no reason why the exact beginning of American photography in 1839 was really marked by the arrival of the daguerreotype in New York.
The daguerreotype certainly dominated the first decade in America, and maybe collectors (where else is the daguerreotype loved more?) would have some influence on the writing of photographic history, but American historians have given scant attention in looking for evidence for first trials in America of photography on paper in the summer of 1839. [31] Did publication of Talbot’s and Herschel’s work really have no response from Americans that summer? Whether or not Seager had only just returned across the Atlantic in September, the earliest availability in New York of details on the daguerreotype technique is the critical issue. Possibly some newspaper of the 20 August from Paris could have been carried on the Great Western, leaving Bristol in the west of England on 24 August to arrive after an exceptionally fast voyage to arrive in New York on 10 September. But there seems little doubt that the first American publication to carry information on Daguerre’s technique was the New York Evening Post of September 20. [32] It reprinted an account of Arago’s lecture of 19 August as it had appeared in The Globe, an evening newspaper published in London late on August 23.
The most informative part of a report of Arago’s lecture of August 19 in The Globe and Traveller, a London evening newspaper of Friday evening, August 23 1839. It is an exact reprinting of the text in an English language newspaper Galignani’s Messenger of Paris, August 20.
Although Robert Taft judged that “the Globe article contained sufficient information” [33] it should also be noted that this particular article was comparatively poor on detail. For example, it had nothing about iodizing of the plate needing a particular length of time in which the method of assessment was by observing changes in colour with the optimum time marked by a colour of golden yellow. Better accounts of the process as outlined by Arago on 19 August appeared in two London intellectual weeklies, The Athenaeum and the Literary Gazette of Saturday August 24. They would be able to reach New York by 21 September on the second voyage of the British Queen. However, it was not those articles in English that were reprinted in America at the end of that September, but the one from The Globe. It is doubtless conceivable that D. W. Seager could have carried out his first trials of the daguerreotype from information available after 21 September in personal copies of the two London weeklies or indeed from earlier French newspapers or even from Gouraud (!) who seems to have already arrived in New York on the British Queen. Seager certainly deserves historical research in greater depth. But Dr. James W. Chilton, at whose pharmacy Seager exhibited his first daguerreotype, and later supplied apparatus and a version of Daguerre’s Manual under his own imprint, should not be forgotten. Until more is discovered about Chilton, Seager, and Gouraud, the sequence of events in New York in September and October 1839 will remain uncertain.
[1] Jules Janin, ‘M. Daguerre’, L’Artiste, 14 July 1839, Vol.3 (2nd Series), No.11, pp. 181–2. “In these magic mirrors, nature herself is reflected in all her simple truth and a little sad ”.
[2] Pierre Harmant has provided the best evidence in ‘Daguerre’s� Manual: a Bibliographic Enigma’, History of Photography, Vol.1 (1977), pp. 79–83.
[3] R. Derek Wood, ‘Ste Croix in London’, History of Photography, Vol. 17: No.1 (Spring 1993), 101–7.
[4] Peter James,’Ste Croix and the Daguerreotype in Birmingham’, History of Photography, Vol. 17: No.1 (Spring 1993), 107–14.
[5] Robert� Taft, Photography and the American Scene, New York (1938): reprinted by Dover Publications 1964.
[6] Beaumont Newhall, The Daguerreotype in America, New York: Dover Books, 3rd revised edition 1976, pp. 27–32, 158–9
[7] R. Taft (1938), pp.14–7, and notes 19 and 20 on pp. 454–5.
[8] Beaumont Newhall, op.cit., p.28
[9] A translation into English by E. Epstean of Giroux’s Contract with Daguerre and Niepce is in The Photographic Journal, 1938, Vol. 78, pp. 28–35, and another translation in H.and A. Gernsheim, Daguerre, New York: Dover publications 1968, pp.189–191.
[10] R. Taft (1938), pp. 14, 41
[11] Robert Taft (1938), illustration on p.13, pp. 14–21, 41–43, 453 (note 13, quote from Niles Register), 454–5 (notes 15, 16 and 20), 460–1 (notes 49 to 53).
[12] All ships leaving Great Britain had to provide a passenger list for the Board of Trade (Public Record Office, London, BT27: Passenger� Lists, outward, 1890–1955) but those before 1890 have been destroyed.
[13] General Reference Branch (NNRG), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington :Ship Passenger Arrival Records,� Microfilm publications M251, Roll 40 (Port of New York, sworn 21 Sept., 1839, Steamship British Queen) and 237, Roll 40� (Port of New York, sworn Nov 25 1839, Steamship British Queen). The Archives in Washington have an efficient NATF Form 81 service by which copy prints from their microfilms of those manuscript records can be purchased.
[14] The Times (London), 8 July 1839, p.1b; 15 July, p.5d; 15 August, p.3, 16 August 1839, p.7f; The Liverpool Times, 16 July 1839, p.5c;.Lloyd’s List (London), 8 July 1839, column 1; 12 July,1; 13 July,1; 15 August,3; 16 August,1; 17 August 1839,1
[15] The Times (London), 9 September,1839, p.5e; 16 October, p.3, p.4; 23� October 1839, p.5f.� Liverpool Chronicle, 26 October 1839, p.2.� Lloyd’s List, 2 September 1839, column 1; 3 September, 1; 5 October, 12; 16 October, 3; 17 October 1839, 2.
[16] British Queen, List of Passengers sworn 21 September 1839 ( see Ref.13 ): 191 names and 5 young children.
[17] The Times, 21 October 1839, p.1a; 31 October, p.1a; 17 December, p.6c (Log of British Queen); 27 December 1839, p.7b. Lloyd’s List, 2 November 1839, column 1; 4 November, 3; 16 December, 11; 26 December 1839, 3.
[18] British Queen, List of Passengers sworn 25 November 1839 (see Ref. 13 ): 156 names plus 7 short–entry names at end that could represent either servants or maybe total of 10 children.
[19] The Times, 9 September 1839, p. 5e.� On the Arrival List of Passengers (see Ref. 13) only five are given as residents of France, two German, one Belgium, and one from Lisbon.
[20] Advertisement in the Parisian English–language Newspaper, Galignani’s Messenger, 29 August, 1839, p.4.� Regular Packet ships also sailed from Havre directly to New York, ie. The Burgundy on September 1, and The Rhone on September 3, were advertised in Galignani’s Messenger, 28 August, 1839.
[21] British Queen, List of Passengers sworn 21 September 1839 (see footnote 13). [The handwriting is subject to uncertain reading particularly regarding the spelling of F. G++++aud. {NB. this sentence was omitted� by mistake from the booklet published by APHS in Jan 1995}] Indeed F. and M. Rinhart in The American Daguerreotype, Athens: University of Georgia Press 1981 (their footnote 31 on p.431), have earlier examined National Archives name indexes of Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, 1820–87, have noted a name there transcribed as “Guddard”, but concluded that “it is unlikely that this was Gouraud”.
[22] R. Taft (1938), p.41n
[23] Giroux et Cie had first on August 21 published an advance notice asking the public to register for the daguerreotype camera equipment and instruction manual that they were in the course of producing (Gazette de France, August 21, 1839, and La Quotidienne, August 23, 1839, p4), but it was not until September 7, 1839 (Journal des D�bats, p.4, and La Quotidienne,� p.4) that their firm for–sale advertisment appeared. Indeed� Susse fr�res of Place de la Bourse, Paris, appear to have made both the manual and their equipment available a few days before Giroux! (Advertisement in Journal des D�bats, 5 September, p.4, and La Quotidienne, 5 September, 1839, p.4. See also Literary Gazette� (London), September 14, 1839, p.590).
[24] Journal des D�bats, 10 Novembre, 1839, p.4.
[25] R. Taft (1938), pp.20–21 and note 28 on p.455.
[ More information about the trip of Dr. Peter and Dr. Bush to London and Paris to buy apparatus for the medical department of Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky, can be found on that University's website. ]
[26] Advertisement in the New York Morning Herald of October 3, 1839, quoted in full in R. Taft (1938), pp.16–7.
[27] Facsimile reproduction of Seager’s autograph letter of Nov 7 1839 appears with anon. editorial comment ‘Photography comes to America’, in Image, Vol. 1 (January 1952), p.2.
[28] Robert Taft (1938), p.15 and note 20 on p.455; and his source, A. Prosch (Anthony’s Bulletin, 1882), is reproduced in William Welling, Photography in America: The Formative� Years,1839–1900, New York: T. Y. Crowell Co., 1978, p. 9 (chapter 2 ‘The young Daguerreans 1839’, pp. 7–15, 405).
[29] Departure of Ships from England to New York can be found in a range of Newspaper advertisements (such as The Times (London), 12 August 1839, p. 1c), but most dependable in Lloyd’s List of London. The Great Western left Bristol on 24 August.�� From London: The Philadelphia 17 Aug., Samson 27 Aug., British Queen 1 Sept., President 7 Sept., The Ontario 17 September 1839.
[30] F. and M. Rinhart, The American Daguerreotype (1981), pp. 24, 430 (footnotes 4 and 7).
[31] For example, Taft in Photography and the American Scene, says nothing about any pre–daguerreotype trials of photography on paper in USA earlier in 1839 except to record a� reminiscence made in 1858 by J. W. Draper (Taft, pp.108–9). There is substantial contemporary evidence of many people in England experimenting with photography on paper in the summer of 1839. Can it be true there are no reports of similar American trials in contempory American publications at that period?
[32] F. and M. Rinhart (1981), pp. 24, 430 (note 6).
[33] R. Taft (1938), p. 14.
� Copyright R. D. Wood (Bromley, Kent, UK):1994
[A small 20-page monograph published by The American Photographic Historical Society, being issued to their members in January 1995. APHS, 1150 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036: Printed in U.S.A.]
Six figures were reproduced in the New York publication as follows:
Inside Front Cover: inset with an engraving, a description of The British Queen from The Times, 15 July 1839
Fig. at top of page iii, Giroux et Cie’s first advertisement for the Daguerreotype Manual and their Daguerreotype camera and equipment “under the direction of M.Daguerre” published in Paris in Le Constitutionnel, Septembre 7, 1839, p.4
Fig. at bottom of page iii, Advertisement for Daguerreotype Manual, Camera and accessories sold by Susse Fr�res in Paris: La Quotidienne, Septembre 5, 1839, p.4.
Fig. on page iv, Part of a report of Arago’s lecture of August 19 in The Globe and Traveller, a London evening newspaper of Friday evening, August 23 1839.� It is an exact reprinting of the text in an English language newspaper Galignani’s Messenger of Paris, August 20.
Fig. on page v, Three advertisements of ship departures from London to New York from The Times (London), August 12, 1839
Fig. on page 6, Giroux et Cie’s advertisement concerning François Gouraud, their Daguerreotype agent in New York: Journal des D�bats� (Paris), 10 Novembre, 1839, p.4.
The American Photographic Society of New York publication was completed at the end by one page (numbered Append A) ‘About the Author’ and two pages (Append B and C) of bibliography of ‘Articles by R. Derek Wood on the history of Photography’.]
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