Louis J. M. Daguerre, trained as a painter, has won fame in Paris for his elaborate stage designs, and has created the Diorama, a theater for the display of large panoramic views whose impressive illusions are heightened by dramatic changes in lighting.

born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France, he was apprenticed in architecture, theater design, and panoramic painting to Pierre Prévost, the first French panorama painter.

Exceedingly adept at his skill of theatrical illusion, he had become a celebrated designer for the theater, and later came to invent the diorama, which opens in Paris in July 1822.

Louis Daguerre begins efforts in 1824 to fix chemically the image of the camera obscura, now widely used as an aide to sketching.

Nicéphore Niépce reveals the existence of his invention, "heliography", where an image can be reproduced on to a pewter plate and then reprinted, in a package sent to Louis Daguerre on June 4, 1827.

In 1829, the two will begin a partnership, and Daguerre will perfect Niépce's photographic process to reproduce images more quickly.

French artist and chemist Louis Daguerre, having experimented on making pictures from 1824, showing dioramas around France, England and Scotland, in 1829 joins French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, said to have first produced long lasting images in 1824, in the quest to perfect the photographic process.

Nicéphore Niépce dies suddenly in 1833.

The main reason for the four-year "partnership,” as far as Louis Daguerre was concerned, had been connected to his already famous dioramas.

Niépce had been a printer and his process had been based on a faster way to produce printing plates.

Daguerre had thought that the process developed by Niépce could help speed up his diorama creation.

He continues their work on photography.

Louis Daguerre announces the latest perfection of the Daguerreotype, after years of experimentation, in 1839, with the French Academy of Sciences announcing the process on January 9 of this year.

He had taken he first photograph of the Moon January 2.

"Boulevard du Temple,” taken by Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839 in Paris, is the first photograph of a person.

The image shows a busy street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear.

The exception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show.

Daguerre had received a patent for his camera (commercially available by September at the price of four hundred francs) on June 22, 1839.

The French Government acquires Daguerre’s patent, and, on August 19, 1839, the French Government announces the invention is a gift "Free to the World."

The work on the Daguerre process had been taking place at the same time as that of Henry Fox Talbot in England on the calotype process.

Both men knew that they were working on a process that will revolutionize the art world.

The popular Grand Tours are illustrated by drawings of scenes and the "photographic" process would improve the quality and ease with which these popular holiday memories could be produced.

To protect his own invention, Daguerre himself had registered the patent for Britain on August 12 (a week before France declared it "Free to the World"), and this greatly slows the development of photography in that nation.

Great Britain is to be the only place the patent was enforced.

Antoine Claudet is one of the few people legally able to take daguerreotypes there

Daguerre does not need to make money from the invention to live, since the French government has pensioned him.

Fox Talbot has spent a considerable amount of money on his process (est. £5,000 in 1830s money) and is keen to recover the costs, which the Daguerre patent blocks.