Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An early photographic process with the image made on a light-sensitive silver-coated metallic plate.
  • noun A photograph made by this process.
  • transitive verb To make a daguerreotype of.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To produce by the daguerreotype process, as a picture.
  • noun One of the earliest processes of photography, the invention of L. J. M. Daguerre of Paris, first published in 1839, by which the lights and shadows of a landscape or a figure are fixed on a prepared metallic plate by the action of actinic light-rays.
  • noun A picture produced by the above process.
  • Relating to or produced by daguerreo-type.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To produce or represent by the daguerreotype process, as a picture.
  • transitive verb To impress with great distinctness; to imprint; to imitate exactly.
  • noun An early variety of photograph, produced on a silver plate, or copper plate covered with silver, and rendered sensitive by the action of iodine, or iodine and bromine, on which, after exposure in the camera, the latent image is developed by the vapor of mercury.
  • noun The process of taking such pictures.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun 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.
  • verb transitive, intransitive To make a photograph using this process, to make a daguerreotype (of).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a photograph made by an early photographic process; the image was produced on a silver plate sensitized to iodine and developed in mercury vapor

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, after Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

After French artist Louis Daguerre (1787–1851) who announced the process in 1839. Daguerre developed the process after some years of collaborations with French chemist Nicéphore Niépce.

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Examples

  • When Louis heard the process referred to as the daguerreotype, he felt a sting of embarrassment; all the geriatric men of the Academy—patent-holders with hooded eyes, aldermen with aquiline noses and snuff pouches—peered in his direction.

    The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre Dominic Smith 2006

  • When Louis heard the process referred to as the daguerreotype, he felt a sting of embarrassment; all the geriatric men of the Academy—patent-holders with hooded eyes, aldermen with aquiline noses and snuff pouches—peered in his direction.

    The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre Dominic Smith 2006

  • When Louis heard the process referred to as the daguerreotype, he felt a sting of embarrassment; all the geriatric men of the Academy—patent-holders with hooded eyes, aldermen with aquiline noses and snuff pouches—peered in his direction.

    The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre Dominic Smith 2006

  • "The daguerreotype is the perfect medium for what I am trying to capture," said Mr. Fuss, standing next to a photograph of a child's toy rabbit, "because it is a mirror and a photograph at the same time, the mirror being the present and the photograph being the past – simultaneous memory, the past and the present at the same time."

    Cooper-Hewitt's Triennial: 20 Architects, No Eisenmans 1999

  • [Page 411] 'daguerreotype' of what I felt, and written only because I had no soul then to speak to.

    Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle 1892

  • Between august 20 and 29, participants will be assured to, by means of workshops, practice historical analog processes such as daguerreotype, cianotype, vandyke, albumen prints, saltprints and pinhole.

    Photography Blog - News 2010

  • Between august 20 and 29, participants will be assured to, by means of workshops, practice historical analog processes such as daguerreotype, cianotype, vandyke, albumen prints, saltprints and pinhole.

    Photography Blog - News 2010

  • Participants will be encouraged to practice historical analogue processes such as daguerreotype, cianotype, vandyke, albumen prints, saltprints and pinhole photography.

    Photography Blog - News 2010

  • Participants will be encouraged to practice historical analogue processes such as daguerreotype, cianotype, vandyke, albumen prints, saltprints and pinhole photography.

    Photography Blog - News 2010

  • ..purportedly, footage was shot in a barn "raised in one day", like that alone is believable, in the pennsylvania countryside on an old 'daguerreotype' camera & the sepia toned fotos were hand colored & then spliced into an action sequence, showing a allegedly fake 'take off & landing'...

    This Just in: I Break for Holidays! BikeSnobNYC 2008

Comments

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  • From the Wikipedia article on memento mori:

    After the invention of photography, many people had photographs taken of recently dead family members; given the technical limitations of daguerreotype photography, this was one way to get the portrait subject to sit still.

    March 24, 2007

  • Modern daguerreotypes are so gorgeous!

    January 20, 2012