September 20, 2024 marks the 185th anniversary of the birth of photography in America. On this day in 1839 the first printed account Arago's description of Daguerre's process as published in the French and British newspapers of the day arrived in New York on the steam packet British Queen which had departed from Portsmouth on 3 September. Arago's description was immediately reprinted in the American press and the first Daguerreotype in America was made by one D.W Segar before the end of the month:
"The New Art- We saw, the other day in Chilton's, in Broadway, a very curious specimen of the new mode, recently invented by Daguerre in Paris, of taking on copper the exact resemblances of scenes and living objects, through the medium of the sun's rays reflected in a camera obscura. The scene embraces part of St. Paul's church, and the surrounding shrubbery and houses, with a corner of the Astor House, and, for aught we know, Stetson looking out of a window, telling a joke about Davie Crockett. All this is represented on a small piece of copper equal in size to a miniature painting." -Morning Herald, September 30, 1839.
"The New Art - Daguerreotype. - Mr. Seager, the ingenious artist of this city, who has first succeeded in catching the sun's rays and imprisoning's them in a morocco case, that is to say, who has transformed figures and landscapes to copper, by the medium of light alone acting on chemical substances - gives a lecture on the art tomorrow evening, at the Stuyvesant Institute. We have a specimen of his ingenuity in our possession, which looks like a piece of fairy work in golden colors." - Morning Herald October 3, 1939.
"The New Art - Daguerreotype. - Mr. Seager, the ingenious artist of this city, who has first succeeded in catching the sun's rays and imprisoning's them in a morocco case, that is to say, who has transformed figures and landscapes to copper, by the medium of light alone acting on chemical substances - gives a lecture on the art tomorrow evening, at the Stuyvesant Institute. We have a specimen of his ingenuity in our possession, which looks like a piece of fairy work in golden colors." - Morning Herald October 3, 1939.