The Photography Department of Cincinnati Museum Center holds about 1 million photographic prints, negatives, slides, glass plate negatives, and cased images such as daguerreotypes. This article is about early photography using examples from my personal collection.

The Photography Department of Cincinnati Museum Center holds about 1 million photographic prints, negatives, slides, glass plate negatives, and cased images such as daguerreotype. This article is about early photography using examples from our collection.

A tintype is a wet-collodion process, same as the ambrotype, with the emulsion applied by hand, but on a dark lacquered iron plate instead of glass. The lacquer forms the dark background required to reveal the positive image. Tintypes are often coated with a protective varnish.

The ambrotype is a direct positive image and uses the wet collodion plate process. The photographer mixes a liquid emulsion of gun cotton (combination of purified cotton with nitric and sulfuric acid), ether and alcohol.

The daguerreotype was invented by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and was introduced to the French Academy of Sciences on January 7, 1839. A silver-plated copper plate is polished on the silver side to a mirror-like sheen and exposed to iodine vapor.

James Antenen Stewart graduated from Hamilton High School in 1941 and the University of Cincinnati in 1945. He later served as the Chief Surgeon of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.SH.) near Seoul.