The daguerreotype is announced

On 19 August 1839, the French government announced in Paris that it had bought the process invented by Louis Daguerre and made it free to the world, except in Britain, where he had patented it. A daguerreotype was a silvered copper plate exposed in a camera, developed with mercury vapour, and fixed, producing a sharp, mirror-like image in a few minutes. Nicephore Niepce, Daguerre's partner who died in 1833, had made the earliest surviving photograph around 1826. Within a year, daguerreotype studios opened in cities everywhere, and portraits became available to the middle classes.

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