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Thomas Wedgewood and Sir Humphrey Davy presented “An Account of Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and making Profiles by the Agency upon Nitrate of Silver.” This article is the earliest record of photography in England.
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The Louisiana Purchase doubles the size of the United States.
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The earliest surviving photograph was created by Joseph Nicephore Niépce, made on a rectangular sheet of pewter. He made a direct positive image.
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The first known image by Henry Fox Talbot was made. He called his invention a “Calotype”.
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Daguerre made an image in Paris that is widely believed to be the first image of a human being.
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News of the invention of photography reached the United States.
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The Open Door by Henry Fox Talbot. He saw photography as an art form from the beginning. This photo was an example of the early beginnings of a new art.
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Irish potato famine begins.
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The Mexican-American War was the first war photographed. Daguerreotypes were used.
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Wet Collodion process invented in 1851. This new method was popular from the 1850s until the 1880s due to the quality of the prints that could be easily reproduced.
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The first major war to be photographed was the Crimean War (1853-56).
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“The Valley of the Shadow of the Valley of Death” by Roger Fenton. He altered the scene by moving some cannon balls to make it more photographic.
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Mathew Brady is the best known civil war photographer and famously photographed Abraham Lincoln
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Pictorialism was born. Pictorialists rejected the need to make the entire image in focus and sharp, aimed to make photographs that looked more like paintings – more expressive.
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The Pony Express begins.
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The war begins.
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Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the War was published.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York.
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Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone.
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Thomas Edison created the first commercially practical incandescent light.
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Alphonse Bertilon standardized the practice of mug shot portraiture and other standardized measurements.
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The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York harbor from France.
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George Eastman creates Kodak. The first Kodak camera was marketed and sold commercially in 1888, “You press the button, we do the rest.”
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Albert Einstein published the theory of special relativity.
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The Photo-Secession Movement began. The goal was to hold exhibitions and shift away from Pictorialists; emphasized American artistic expression.
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The Cubist art movement began in Paris.
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Paul Strand pioneered straight photography, became the aesthetic of the 1920s.
