Such daguerreotypes as that of Abigail, and the ambrotypes and the ferrotypes which were advertised at almost the same time--so quickly were new kinds of pictures invented when once the process of photography was discovered--were the first portraits made by the camera. Compared with the beautiful photographs of to-day, these pictures taken during the ten years preceding the Civil War seem very poor and unsatisfactory; but to those who had never seen any likenesses except either the oil portraits or the silhouettes, these likenesses made by the camera were very wonderful.
It is rather surprising that the pictures taken when Anna was a child were as good as those still in existence show them to have been. It had been little more than ten years since Monsieur Daguerre had announced to the French Academy his invention of photography. Unlike most other inventors he actually wished all his discoveries to be made public, and as a result, the further discoveries of other men greatly hastened the development of the art.
In 1839, when Daguerre announced his discovery, he exposed his picture one hour and twelve minutes. This, of course, meant that it could not be used for portraits until the exposure could be reduced to a reasonable length. The use of different chemicals from those Daguerre used soon brought the time of exposure to thirty minutes; but one of the newspapers of the day says that the portraits taken then were "terrific likenesses of the human visage."
By 1850 such improvements had been made that one writer says that in the large cities cameras were as common as hand organs, and that the pictures were no longer "terrific." The credit for all this surely belongs to the far-seeing inventor who asked that he might give to the public all that he had found out, in order that other men might build on his discoveries.
After seeing three of these new pictures, it was no wonder that Anna could hardly wait until the next day to go to the photographer's herself. That night at bedtime she said to her mother, "I suppose, if my hair is going to look black in the picture, I could have black curls if you were willing to do up my hair on rags."
"Do you really want me to?" asked her mother, hoping Anna would decide against the curls.