John William Draper
1850s, 1876
No. 5. Section of Pine Wood. Copied from a Daguerreotype by Prof. J. W. Draper of New York.
[Volume of 9 photographs (large quarto) copied at the Army Medical Museum from daguerreotypes of microscopical objects made by Professor Draper in 1850-'52.]

Photograph
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Id Number: PH.334771, Catalog Number: 334771, Accession Number: 304826
 
This is marked “No. 5. Section of Pine Wood. Copied from a Daguerreotype by Prof. J. W. Draper of New York.” The reference is to John William Draper (1811-1882), an English immigrant who did import work in several areas of science and medicine.
 
Visitors to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 might examine “a volume of 9 photographs (large quarto) copied at the Army Medical Museum from daguerreotypes of microscopical objects made by Professor Draper in 1850-'52.” According to an official account of this display, the “special interest attaching to these photographs is that the daguerreotypes were the first of microscopic objects made in America, and that they were made by Professor Draper by sunlight passed through a cell containing the ammonia-sulphate of copper; a method original with him which has since been found indispensable to success in photomicrography.”
 
Ref: Report of the Board on Behalf of the United States Executive Departments at the International Exhibition, Held at Philadelphia, Pa., 1876 (Washington, D.C., 1884), vol. 1, p. 229.
 
LL/126561