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1835	Chronomedia index Numbers after entries link to the list of references.	links and notes
summer	Fox Talbot achieves his first success with a negative photographic image. He later has the idea of using such an image to make a positive paper print.

1836
•	Professor Friedrich Gerber at the University of Berne, Switzerland fixes photographic images makes on paper coated with silver salts in a camera obscura, according to a claim written in 1839. No examples survived and no witnesses of the process are known.

1837
February 25	Direct current (DC) electric motor is patented (but not yet built) by Thomas Davenport in US (patent no 132).
•	Telegraph code is invented by Samuel F B Morse (1791-1872) and Alfred Vail in US but not demonstrated publicly for another 11 months.
•	Edward Davy takes out a UK patent (no 7719) for telegraph signal relay. W F Cooke and Charles Wheatstone also take a patent (no 7390) for a telegraph bell relay, the ‘five-needle’ telegraph.
•	Godefroy Engelmann is granted an English patent for chromolithography ('lithocolor printing or lithographs in color imitating painting'), achieved by carefully-aligned additive superimposition of separate prints in each of the primary colours.
•	Daguerre invents the daguerrotype, fixing positive photographic images on a copper plate coated with silver iodide and developed with mercury vapour.

1838
January 6	Samuel Morse gives the first public demonstration of his electric telegraphy system at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey.
January 3/8	Morse code is first transmitted by Alfred Vail at Morristown, NJ.
•	Charles Wheatstone’s reflecting stereoscope.

1839
January 7	Louis Daguerre makes the first public demonstration of his photographic system at the Académie des Sciences in Paris.
January 25	Examples of Fox Talbot's 'photogenic drawings' are demonstrated at the Royal Society by Michael Faraday.
January 31	Fox Talbot publishes a paper to describe his Calotype photographic process. The exposure time is around 20 minutes.
March 14	Sir John Herschel refers to 'photography' in a lecture to the Royal Society—possibly the first use of the word.
April	Ackerman & Co of London offer for sale to the public boxed kits for 'photogenic drawing', using Fox Talbot's technique.
April 20	The English magazine The Mirror publishes one of Fox Talbot's photogenic drawings of ferns on its front page.
June	Francis West, an optician in Fleet Street, London, advertises a Fox Talbot 'heliographic camera' in The Mirror, the first camera to be offered to the public.
June	Frenchman Hippolyte Bayard displays a series of direct positive photographic images in Paris but is reputedly paid Ffr 600 by Daguerre to delay revealing his technique until 1840.
August 19	Daguerre publishes a manual for his photographic technique, causing an immediate demand among the French public for the equipment and chemicals needed.
•	French government buys Daguerre’s newly perfected photographic system.
autumn	Samuel Morse and D W Seager acquire copies of Daguerre's manual and make rival claims to take the first photographs in the US. Seager's photograph of St Paul's Church at Broadway and Fulton Street, New York is the first to be exhibited.
•	Edmond Becquerel discovers the electro-chemical effect of light (the photovoltaic effect).
•	First microfilm photographs of documents are made by John Benjamin Dancer in the UK; reduction of 1:160 with a side length of about 3mm is achieved.
•	The eye of a fly is photographed in France on a daguerrotype by Alfred Donné (1801-1878).
•	Electric telegraph system between Paddington Station and West Drayton in London, designed and installed by Charles Wheatstone, is brought into operation.
•	In Britain, Henry Langdon Childe adds the dissolving views effect to magic lantern shows.

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Page updated 10 April 2008
© David Fisher