Jacques Daguerre.

The early career of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (pronounced "dah-GEHR") was as an artist at the Paris Opera in France. He was apprenticed to the chief designer in 1803 and later worked as an assistant to the panorama painter. After his successful exhibit at the Salon in 1814, he worked as an independent stage designer. His set designs were widely acclaimed. In 1822, Daguerre formed a partnership with Charles Marie Bouton, with whom he developed the Diorama. The Diorama consisted of massive pictures painted on both sides of translucent, or transparent, linen. These pictures could be lit from either the top or the rear in order to show the front or back picture. By controlling the lighting, different seasons or times of day were represented. The result was a startling visual effect that fascinated audiences. Bouton and Daguerre established theaters for the Diorama in both Paris and London. In order to create the paintings, Daguerre used a camera obscura, or dark room. The camera obscura was a pinhole camera that used light falling through a small opening to project an image on a screen or sheet of paper. Daguerre became fascinated by the idea of permanently fixing the camera obscura image on paper. In 1826, Daguerre learned of research that Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce was conducting on chemically fixing images. Niépce had already fixed outlines of objects on light-sensitive plates. Daguerre had not yet been successful in his experiments. Niépce and Daguerre became partners in 1829. Niépce had discovered that reverse (or negative) images could be produced using silver chloride to fix the image. He abandoned the process in order to work on producing a direct positive. Daguerre developed a method to reduce exposure time and produced a better lens. INSET: Jacques Daguerre.