Google honors Louis Daguerre’s birthday with a logo sketch today. Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, the first successful commercial method of photography. The above photo is, as far as we know, the first photograph of a person (the two people in the lower left, one shining the other’s shoes). Also notable is what happened when Daguerre patented the process: the French government acquired the patent and announced that it was a gift to the free world. Imagine if photography was invented today: it would probably be patented, quite possibly government regulated (to protect us from terrorists, natch).
Nov 18, 2011