Sunday, October 31, 2010

Alphonse Giroux: Daguerreotype


When:1839.

Why: first "mass"-produced camera, the most valuable camera these days.


Alphonse Guroux, being a relative to Louis-Jaques-Mandé Daguerre, got an exclusive permission from Daguerre and Isidore Niépce (daughter of Daguerre's partner and inventor of the first bellows camera) to manufacture and sell these cameras. It's hard to tell how many of these cameras were manufactured exactly, but they were the first to be manufactured in quantities and to be exported to other countries. Currently these cameras are extremely rare, and prices reach close to a million of $s.