Early Photography Timeline
1839 | 1850 | 1851 | 1853 | 1854 | 1859 | 1866 | 1871
1839
Daguerreotypes
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre announces the daguerreotype.
Salted paper photographs or salt prints
William Henry Fox Talbot was one of the pioneers in making positive paper photo prints. Salted paper photographs or salt prints as they were commonly called are introduced in 1839. Eclipsed by the daguerreotype and albumen prints, they are mostly gone by 1860.
1850
Albumen paper prints
Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard introduces the albumen paper print process in 1850 utilizing the albumen component obtained from the whites of chicken eggs. These wildly popular photographs have their peak from about 1855 through 1890.
1851
Ambrotypes
Frederick Scott Archer introduces the wet plate collodion process, used in ambrotypes and early tintypes.
1853
Tintypes
Adolphe-Alexandre Martin invents the tintype photograph. It is patented in America by Prof. Hamilton Smith in 1856.
1854
Cartes-de-visite
The carte-de-visite is patented by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disderi. It is introduced in New York around 1859.
1859
Stereograph cards
Oliver Wendell Holmes invents a handheld stereoscope viewer. Stereograph cards become popular.
1866
Mounted albumen prints
Mounted albumen prints known as cabinet cards become popular. Larger sizes such as Imperial, Boudoir and Victoria are introduced later.
1871
Gelatin silver prints
The gelatin silver print process is introduced by Richard Leach Maddox in 1871. With numerous improvements by many others the process proves popular well into the 1970s.