Le Daguerreotype
Le Daguerreotype was Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre's main contribution to camera history: The sliding box camera was designed by him. Two variants were made since he gave production licences to two Parisian camera makers, Alphonse Giroux and the brethren Susse. Probably Giroux worked together with the optician Bianchi who had his shop in the same street. Thus the original "Le Daguerreotype" of Giroux with Daguerre's quality seal was basically the same as the sliding box camera offered by Bianchi, unsealed. Only one surviving camera of the Susse brothers' production is known. In 2007 it was sold in an auction for a record price of 580.000 €.
The camera was a sliding box camera. The inner box with open front and screen in the back had to be shifted like a sliding box but more carefully into or out of the outer box for focusing. After focusing the screen had to be replaced with the holder for the light-sensitized plate. The front plate of the outer box held a meniscus lens in a brass barrel, named like the camera Le Daguerreotype" and made by Charles Chevalier or by N. P. Lerebours. The lenses differed slightly in max. aperture (f14 to f17) and in focal length. The camera was sold together with a plate holder with "barn doors", a plate sensitizing box, and a developing box.
Links
- Message about the Susse camera auction in photoscala [1]
- Susse's camera at news24
- auction catalogue page, here another
- Earliest Giroux camera at Åke Hultman's [2]
- Le Daguerreotype at Deutsches Museum Munich
