Spencer said a man had a satchel full of “sixth plates,” of a common size of daguerreotype, about 2 3/4 by 3 1/4 inches, like Spencer’s image of Spencer said he found his Grant image for sale at the San Jose Photographic Exposition in about 1992. The process flourished less than two decades before ambrotype, the next of many successively faster and cheaper photographic processes, began to replace it. The following year, American Robert Corneilus found a way to reduce exposure times from several minutes to seconds, and ushered in the age of the studio daguerreotype “likeness.”Įach daguerreotype was the original plate upon which the image was captured, so it was unique there was no negative from which to make copies. He began poring over books and memorizing every known image he could find, captured in the 19th century dawn of photography, of any American historical figure.įrenchman Louis Daguerre discovered a practical means of developing a photographic image on a metal plate and demonstrated it to the French
That was the point when interest became obsession, Spencer said.
He captured the image but wasn’t able to get the album. It had been discarded out of a sterling silver photo album that was put up for sale in the same store. Spencer thinks it was 1991, but remembers the date clearly: Lincoln’s birthday. Thomas Lincoln, Sarah Bush Lincoln, the stepmother who raised Abraham Lincoln. “And what really launched me into photography was discovering a picture of Mrs. “There was at that time still an abundance of Early American photography that had not been examined, especially in San Francisco, because when people went West in the mid-19th century, that’s where they ended up,” Spencer said. Later he started his own shop in California’s Bay Area. In the 1970s, his day job was managing the Early American division for a large antique dealership. Spencer, 56, is an alternative rock ‘n’ roll guitar player who performs under the name Eric London. “I was told that the man who had these had bought stacks of daguerreotypes, and they were obviously from a collection because they were all the finest quality I have ever seen,” Spencer said. Grant, the Civil War general who went on to become the nation’s 18th president.Ī University of Nevada, Las Vegas archivist says the daguerreotype appears to be an authentic image of Grant, who served two terms as president from 1869 to 1877.Ĭollector Randall Spencer said he would prefer to sell the image to a historical institution for public display, but would consider selling it toĪ private collector to finance his search for vanishing images of U.S. LAS VEGAS (AP) – A Nevada collector believes he has found a mid-1800s photographic image of Ulysses S. Image courtesy Library of Congress via Wikipedia. Grant, image by either Mathew Brady or Levin C.
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