to the wet collodion process. He was originally a scene painter in the theater, and in 1822 he established the Diorama, a theatrical spectacle that required large panoramic paintings. He would achieve accurate details and perspective in these huge paintings with the use of basic sketches he made with the aid of a camera obscura, a means of projecting a scene through a pinhole to reproduce it on a wall. Daguerre wanted to make the camera obscura images permanent with a light-sensitive substance. Whatever early experiments he may have made have been lost, and the first report of any success comes in 1829 when Daguerre learned that Joseph Nicéphore Niepce was working on the same problem and had had some success. The two met and agreed to a partnership. Niepce had been working for several years on an asphalt process, and Daguerre decided it was impractical. Niepce died in 1833. Daguerre returned to Niepce's early work with silver salts, and he found that silver iodide was more sensitive to light than silver nitrate. His most impor
...