daguerreotype

An early type of photograph created by exposing a silver surface which has previously been exposed to either iodine vapor or iodine and bromine vapors; such a photograph.

The awakening of science to this new way of seeing the cosmos began with Johann Ritter in 1801. By 1815, scientists found that Ritter's “chemical rays” [ultraviolet rays] darkened not just silver chloride but also many other kinds of metallic salts. Between 1826 and 1837, Nicéphore Niépce, credited with taking the first successful photograph, in 1827, and Louis Daguerre, the most famous photographic innovator of his day, found that silver iodide was especially light sensitive, and they used this discovery as the basis for their early work, which even then had begun to gain international notice. By 1842, others found that when sunlight hit a gelatin emulsion containing silver iodide, soon to be called a daguerreotype plate, it induced a photochemical reaction. Practical photography was born.

The process of making such photographs.

A faithful or exact representation or description.

To make a photograph using this process, to make a daguerreotype (of).

To describe or represent exactly or faithfully; depict.

[H]e scanned my countenance with a pair of fierce, blood-shot eyes that I knew would daguerreotype my appearance indellibly^([sic]) and faithfully upon his mind.