How to Make a Daugerreotype (Real Mercury Process)

Making a Daguerreotype

This article has all of the materials, links, and information to create a Dag  (Daguerreotype) and will be updated frequently. I’ll outline the process of making a true Mercury daguerreotype (rather than the easier daguerreotype becquerel method.)

Mercury daguerreotypes are wonderful, gem-like photographic images.They are one of kinda and need to be experienced in person - as their shimmering between positive and negative, image and reflection can not be translate into a digital experience.

You can learn more about the history of the Daguerreotype here.

Notes on Safety

True Mercury Dags are dangerous to create. Please note that I take no responsibility for injury or death. This document and my YouTube video are for educational purposes only.

1 - Getting Your Plate

First off, you’ll need a silver coated copper plate to make your Daguerreotype. Typically there are two different kinds of places.

Electroplated Plates

Electroplated Dag plates have silver bonded to the copper. These plates typically have less silver… so it’s easier to rub through the layer of silver when you’re polishing. They tend to be less expensive.

Cold Roll Clad Plates

These plates are made by rolling silver over copper and pressing the two together. The resulting plates have a thicker layer of silver and can be more expensive.

Regardless of what kind of plate you want, you’ll need to get one. Here’s how:

Buy Your Daguerreotype Plates

There are two main sellers of Daguerreotype plates that I know of.

• Mike Robinson of Century Darkroom sells Cold Roll Clad plates.

• Soon I will be selling Electroplated Daguerreotype plates. You can Email me here to RSVP:

Make Your Own

If you want to make your own, here are the specifications to keep in mind:

• Copper plate, about 16 guage.

• Have at least 9 micrometers of silver plated on to it.

• Make sure to plate “bright” and not “white.”

2 - Pre-buffing

So you have your plates. Now you’ll need to pre-buff them. Basically starting the polishing process. To do that you’ll need…

Materials Needed:

• Cotton Flannel for polishing. You can get a big roll of this from Joann’s and cut it up. Our just buy something like this.

• NuShine Grade S polishing material or 1800 grit aluminum oxide powder.

Pre-buffing method:

1. Moisten cotton pad with distilled water.

2. Add a bit of polishing powder.

3. Spread evenly on the plate.

4. Buff with your hand in a parallel and perpendicular (up and down, then left and right) orientation.

5. As you polish, apply less and less pressure.

6. Rinse with distilled water and dry with hair blower.

You can also take a plate that’s already been exposed by repeating the above steps 3 to 4 times.

3 - Buffing (Rouge)

With pre-bruffing done it’s time to get into our more fine buffing stage.

Materials needed:

• Rouge Polishing Powder.

• Silk sock to fill with Rouge powder.

• Orbital sheet sander.

Rouge Polishing Method:

• Tape your Daguerreotype plate to your surface with blue tape so it doesn’t move during polishing.

• Fix a few sheets of cotton flannel onto the Orbital sander.

• Slap on an even layer of Rouge powder onto the cotton, using a silk sock.

• Start buffing your plate. Use a LOT of pressure.

• Keep using pressure, and check the plate to see when it’s polished without any scratches.

• Your goal with the rouge buffing is to remove vertical scratches from the pre-buffing.

• After vertical marks remove, target all other minor imperfections with less pressure.

• Needs to be perfect.

4 - Buffing (Lamp Black)

This is our final and most delicate phase of polishing. Contrast and blacks will be be affected by imperfections in this phase of polishing. Be highly detailed.

Materials needed:

• Lamp Black. (It’s a super fine, carbon powder. Usually used as a pigment. In our case, a soft polisher.)

• Silk sock to fill with Lamp Black.

• A second Orbital sheet sander.

Lamp Black Polishing Method:

• Do the same thing as the Rouge method, only use less pressure.

• Keep checking the plate until the surface is perfectly mirrored.

• When done, clean black and sides with air duster.

5 - Charging Sensitizing Boxes

We’ll start dealing with chemicals now. Our goal is to fill wooden boxes with dangerous chemical fumes (iodine and bromine) that will make our silver plate sensitive to light.

To do that, let’s prep our chemicals. We’ll need Iodine and Bromine.

Iodine Safety

Iodine comes in a crystal form, which you can buy here. It is relatively safe when kept inside the ampules. Be sure to use this material with a health respect: using a chemical fume hood, etc.

Bromine Safety

Bromine is particularly nasty. You need to keep Bromine inside PTFE contains like this. They will help protect the bromine fumes from escaping and corroding everything around it… but wont stop it entirely. Bromine fumes are highly toxic. Be very careful - use a proper chemical hood.

Charing the Boxes

1. Fill two glass half quart containers with Silica beads.

2. Add one tiny iodine crystal into one of the containers. The beads will absorb the iodine fumes and turn jet black.

3. Put the tip of a pipette into the Bromine and stick it into the second container with beads. (Less than 1ml of Bromine.) The beads will absorb the fumes and turn bright yellow.

4. Pour the charged beads into two sensitizing boxes (like these from Mike Robinson.)

5. Close the boxes (with the beads inside) and leave for 20 minutes. The fumes will fill and “charge” the boxes.

6 - Sensitizing the Plates

More details coming soon.

The History of the Daguerreotype

Strings Attached.

The gift of the french to the world was the Daguerreotype. While a flattering statement for the French, one must not forget that, like lunch, nothing comes free. It’s striking to think that such a popular commercially viable and patentable process such as the Daguerreotype would not find success first in the private sector before being released to the public. Why?

This writing will examine what factors went into this bold and seemingly obvious decision, by whom, and to what ends. What became of the Daguerreotype? What were the consequences of the patent release? Most importantly, why would one of the largest technical achievements in the history of modern times be simply given away? As we will find, the answer is not so simple that we can sequester it into the category as purely altruistic.

Louis Daguerre, Library of Congress.

Daguerre, who by fate would develope the silver-on-mirror technique for fixing images in the same year as Talbot’s Calotype, announced his accomplishment in 1839. The Daguerreotype was not just seen as technically superior at the time, as the images were of higher clarity [1] and had less a propensity to fade as did the Calotype; but they also were substantially more popular in part due to the lack of aggressive patenting.

The technical superiority of the Daguerreotype over the Calotype should not be understated. In fact, a reviewer at the International Photography Exhibit of 1863 remarked that many images were “fading before the eyes of the nations assembled.” [2] Clarity in the Daguerreotype was more pronounced, no doubt a result of printing on glass rather than porous paper, as the Calotype did.

To make matters worse for the Calotype, it’s inventor William F. Talbot was notoriously known for having a poor business sense. Talbot’s publication, the Pencil of Nature, had dwindling sales before being abandoned - not finished - before the 7th edition was released. [3] Still, Despite all of these disadvantages the Calotype still had the important advantage of mass production; a quality that was not merely lacking but non existent in the Daguerreotype.

The Daguerreotype was embraced by nearly every corner of the world. Studios soon began popping up in America [4] and by the late 1850’s, Daguerreotypes represented the majority of all images produced photographic images. Over 30 million were made made in the United States alone. [5]

Daguerreotype, Father with his Son, Library of Congress

Calotype, Father with his Son, Library of Congress.

One wonders if Daguerre could have imagined the revolutionary nature of his image fixing process. Even if only a fraction of the 30 millions daguerreotypes were made, a decrease due to a licensing fee, he may have been vastly more wealthy than he ended up being. Here we arrived at our first startling question: if the Daguerreotype was seen as superior to its rival Calotype, with the one noted exception, and it’s rival creator perhaps intrinsically a poor business man, why would Daguerre not patent his process?

To answer this, we must first note that the Daguerreotype was a gift to the world with one substantial string attached: England would not have access to this gift, adding to the longstanding contention both countries already shared. Daguerre filed a patent for his process in the United Kingdom through an intermediary, Miles Berry, on August 14th, 1839 [6].

As it happened, Louis Daguerre initially did try to sell his process in france for a sum of 200,000 Francs [7], worth today about 5.6 Million Francs. This attempt was unsuccessful. At about the same time, Daguerre began relationship with a member of the French Academy of Science, who ultimately persuaded Daguerre and the Monarchy to release the patent.

Lunar animals and other objects Discovered by Sir John Herschel, Library of Congress.

Meanwhile, Daguerre was was in talks with Sir John Herschel of the British Royal Society. Hershel had been supervising a voyage to the antarctic, where the Daguerreotype would prove more favorable than the older Camera Obscura for scientific inquiry. Both men were hopeful that the British government would purchase the patent from Daguerre for British common use. Hershel even request that Daguerre send him a sealed envelope that be opened on the voyage itself, quite confident that the government would purchase the rights for only 3,000 Pounds, about $91,460 today. [8]

The French Monarchy offered Daguerre a pension of 6,000 francs per year, about $77,400 [9] to buyout the Patent. It was on August 19th, 1839 that King Louis Philippe released the patent [10] to the world. Curiously, the British Crown was unwilling to pay for the equivalent of just over a year of Daguerre’s pension to retain the same level of photographic freedoms for it’s citizens that France was willing to pay a lifetime for.

It may have been that Daguerre and the Monarchy could see far enough ahead to realize that enforcing the patent would be futile (a topic we will soon revisit) and that sooner or later, a better process would take it’s place. This buyout would also help to eliminate patent monopolization [11] - a practice that still occurs today. In the colloquial books of history, France would also hold the honor of being the country to release the process to the world - a political move they were very much privy to [12].

While the British Crown had little interest in buying out the patent, the citizens themselves did. Ultimately the photographer Richard Beard purchased the sole rights for the Daguerreotype from Miles Berry. His intention was to not only create Daguerreotypes himself, but also license the rights to other photographers in the United Kingdom and its colonies.

Beard fell into great success with this licensing [13] but soon encountered many of the problems the French must have foreseen: licensing the patent rights can be difficult to enforce. Within a few years Beard had already filed six lawsuits with photographers who had been using the Daguerre processing without paying licensing fees - or related disputes. Beard V Egerton set the foundation for alien Patent law UK, still referred to today.

Ultimately the costs of the lawsuits overwhelmed Beard’s resources and by 1950 he was bankrupt. This timing couldn’t be worse for Beard, as Frederick Scott Archer developed his collodion-process photography using glass plates. This methods was far less toxic for the photographer, far cheaper, faster, and could be reproduced. Like Daguerre, Archer did not patent his process [14].

Wet-collodion process, General Robert E. Lee and Sons, Library of Congress.

Talbot sued Archer, allowing Beard another five years to license his practice. He continued to sell his photographs until 1857 when he handed his business to his son and returned to his previous career as a coal merchant. [15] By 1859 the patent could be renewed no longer, de jure.

After researching this topic, I’ve uncovered an interconnected web of lawsuits and financial gains that are oversimplified in to the short phrase “a gift to the world.” Surprising, unlike Archer, Beard, and Talbot - who saw little financial rewards for their photographic patents and licensing, it was who Daguerre made off with a substantial yearly pension, as well as licensing fees from his English patent.

Works Cited

[1] “Daguerre And Talbot.” Dawn's Early Light, Cornell University Library, 2011, rmc.library.cornell.edu/DawnsEarlyLight/exhibition/daguerretalbot/.

[2] Daniel, Author: Malcolm. “William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and the Invention of Photography | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 2004, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tlbt/hd_tlbt.htm.

[3] “William Henry Fox Talbot | The Pencil of Nature | The Met.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I.e. The Met Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267022.

[4] Photographs, Author: Department of. “The Daguerreian Era and Early American Photography on Paper, 1839–60 | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 2004, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/adag/hd_adag.htm.

[5] Barger, M. Susan, and William Blaine White. The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

[6] Mcintosh, Alexander. A General Index to the Repertory of Patent Inventions, and Other Discoveries and Improvements in Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, from 1815 to 1845, Inclusive. 1846.

[7] Birchler, Urs W., and Monika Bütler. Information Economics. Routledge, 2010.

[8] Wood, R. Derek. “British Government Grant To The Royal Society.” History of Photography, vol. 4, Jan. 1980, pp. 1–16., doi:10.1126/science.84.2190.546.

[9] Bottomley, Sean. The British Patent System and the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1852: from Privilege to Property. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

[10] Mcintosh, Alexander. A General Index to the Repertory of Patent Inventions, and Other Discoveries and Improvements in Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, from 1815 to 1845, Inclusive. 1846.

[11] Kremer, Michael R. “Patent Buyouts: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation.”Https://Dash.harvard.edu/Bitstream/Handle/1/3693705/Kremer_PatentBuyouts.Pdf?Se, Harvard University, 4 Aug. 2017, dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3693705/Kremer_PatentBuyouts.pdf?se.

[12] Lesk, Michael. “Digital Rights.” Http://Citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/Viewdoc/Summary?Doi=10.1.1.693.9735, Penn State University, citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.693.9735.

[13] “Richard Beard (English, 1801 - 1885) (Getty Museum).” The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles, The Getty, www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/2029/richard-beard-english-1801-1885/

[14] Lesk, Michael. “Digital Rights.” Http://Citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/Viewdoc/Summary?Doi=10.1.1.693.9735, Penn State University, citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.693.9735.

[15] “Richard Beard (English, 1801 - 1885) (Getty Museum).” The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles, The Getty, www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/2029/richard-beard-english-1801-1885/.