History and Practice of the Art of Photography | Page 4

1849. Mr. H. H. SNELLING.
Dear Sir--Your note of January 27th, requesting permission to dedicate
to me your "History and Practice of Photography," I esteem a high
compliment, particularly since I have read the manuscript of your work.
Such a treatise has long been needed, and the manner in which you
have handled the subject will make the book as interesting to the
reading public as it is valuable to the Daguerrean artist, or the amateur
dabbler in Photography. I have read nearly all of the many works upon
this art that have emanated from the London and Paris presses, and I
think the reader will find in yours the pith of them all, with much
practical and useful information that I do not remember to have seen
communicated elsewhere.
There is much in it to arouse the reflective and inventive faculties of
our Daguerreotypists. They have heretofore stumbled along with very
little knowledge of the true theory of their art, and yet the quality of
their productions is far in advance of those of the French and English
artists, most of whose establishments I have had the pleasure of visiting
I feel therefore, that when a sufficient amount of theoretic knowledge
shall have been added to this practical skill on the part of our operators,
and when they shall have been made fully acquainted with what has
been attained or attempted by others, a still greater advance in the art

will be manifested.
A GOOD Daguerreotypist is by no means a mere machine following a
certain set of fixed rules. Success in this art requires personal skill and
artistic taste to a much greater degree than the unthinking public
generally imagine; in fact more than is imagined by nine-tenths of the
Daguerreotypists themselves. And we see as a natural result, that while
the business numbers its thousands of votaries, but few rise to any
degree of eminence. It is because they look upon their business as a
mere mechanical operation, and having no aim or pride beyond the
earning of their daily bread, they calculate what will be a fair per
centage on the cost of their plate, case, and chemicals, leaving MIND,
which is as much CAPITAL as anything else (where it is exercised,)
entirely out of the question.
The art of taking photographs on PAPER, of which your work treats at
considerable length, has as yet attracted but little attention in this
country, though destined, as I fully believe, to attain an importance far
superior to that to which the Daguerreotype has risen.
The American mind needs a waking up upon the subject, and I think
your book will give a powerful impulse in this direction. In Germany a
high degree of perfection has been reached, and I hope your
countrymen will not be slow to follow.
Your interesting account of the experiments of Mr. Wattles was entirely
new to me, and is another among the many evidences that when the age
is fully ripe for any great discovery, it is rare that it does not occur to
more than a single mind.
Trusting that your work will meet with the encouragement which your
trouble in preparing it deserves, and with gratitude for the undeserved
compliment paid to me in its dedication,
I remain, very sincerely, Your friend and well wisher, E. ANTHONY.

PHOTOGRAPHY.
CHAP. I.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ART.
As in all cases of great and valuable inventions in science and art the
English lay claim to the honor of having first discovered that of
Photogenic drawing. But we shall see in the progress of this history,
that like many other assumptions of their authors, priority in this is no

more due them, then the invention of steamboats, or the cotton gin.
This claim is founded upon the fact that in 1802 Mr. Wedgwood
recorded an experiment in the Journal of the Royal Institution of the
following nature.
"A piece of paper, or other convenient material, was placed upon a
frame and sponged over with a solution of nitrate of silver; it was then
placed behind a painting on glass and the light traversing the painting
produced a kind of copy upon the prepared paper, those parts in which
the rays were least intercepted being of the darkest hues. Here, however,
terminated the experiment; for although both Mr. Wedgwood and Sir
Humphry Davey experimented carefully, for the purpose of
endeavoring to fix the drawings thus obtained, yet the object could not
be accomplished, and the whole ended in failure."
This, by their own showing, was the earliest attempt of the English
savans. But this much of the principle was known to the Alchemists at
an early date-- although practically produced in another way--as the
following experiment, to be found in old books, amply proves.
"Dissolve