Between the years 1790 and 1880 the U.S. Patent Office required both documentation and a three-dimensional working model to demonstrate each new invention submitted for a patent. The models helped to explain proposed innovations and compare them against similar inventions. In this online exhibiti

This Mercury fuming box for developing daguerreotypes is certainly among the earliest photographic equipment used in America, dating 1839-1840. Working closely with Dr. J.W. Draper in New York, Morse was instrumental in promoting photography in America, furthering experimentation, and producing e

Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872), an artist and inventor of the telegraph, was in Paris in 1839 sharing the scientific and celebrity stage with Daguerre. The two inventors shared notes on their inventions and Morse returned to the US with a camera, perhaps the first camera in the United States...